💡 WiseUp! Vol. 82 — A guide to memorization, add a modern toolbar, and read like Borges

📍 Let's start with a reading recommendation

A guide to surviving the great forgetting: How to (re)train your memory

Ruth Gaskovski and Peco of School of the Unconformed put together a meaty guide to memorization, with techniques like the memory palace and the link-and-story method that have even third graders memorizing the periodic table. Their case is that memorizing isn't the opposite of thinking, it's what makes higher order thinking possible. "The more factual knowledge people have about a topic, the better they can think about it critically and analytically. The more knowledge we have stored in long-term memory, the fewer items take up valuable space in (shorter-term) working memory. Memorization is not antithetical to critical or analytical thinking, but rather forms the foundations for it."

From the support inbox

Have questions about using Readwise or Reader in your workflow? We'd love to be your guide! Reply to this email with your question and you might be featured in an upcoming issue. Even if your question isn’t featured, we’ll respond to every message.

❓ A Readwise question from Johnny M:

Can I connect my BOOX highlights with Readwise?

Your BOOX can keep your reading and Readwise highlights connected in one place (read the full announcement here). Highlights and annotations you make in NeoReader can be sent straight to Readwise, and you can also browse your existing Readwise highlights from inside NeoReader. If you prefer the full Readwise experience, you can still install the Readwise app from Google Play for Daily Review, search, tags, and more.

❓ A Reader question from David P:

Can I choose where my saved Twitter/X content goes in Readwise?

Yes, you can choose where each type of Twitter/X content lands, so the things you save end up where they’re most useful to you. A single tweet can be saved to Readwise as a highlight, a full thread can be sent to Reader as an article, and your Bookmarks can sync automatically. You can change those destinations anytime from your Twitter/X integration settings.

📖 New help doc of the week

Swipe right on Reader's modern mobile toolbar

It's a match! The modern toolbar lets you swipe between documents without leaving the reading view, chat with Ghostreader on the spot, and triage from a single tidy menu. Not ready to commit? The docs also show how to keep things classic.

🎬 New video of the week

How to read books like Borges

This week, we’re sharing Vashik Armenikus’ deep-dive on Jorge Luis Borges, and how the famed Argentine writer used reading to fuel his own short stories.

📰 Aug 15 - Aug 21 updates

What's new in Reader and Readwise

🔊 Fixed Auto-Scroll Setting — Turning off auto-scroll during text-to-speech on web only lasted until you closed the player; the next document would start following the voice again. Mati made the choice stick, so once you disable auto-scrolling from the command palette it stays off across documents until you turn it back on.

📕 Fixed Kindle Disconnecting — Removing your Kindle connection from the Readwise sync page used to just tell you to uninstall the browser extension, and the card kept insisting Kindle was connected even after you did. Ibai wired up a proper Remove Connection button that clears the connection and sync state, leaves your books and highlights untouched, and stays disconnected even with the extension still installed. Reconnecting is one click whenever you want it back.

📥 Fixed Kindle Notebook Import — Importing a Kindle notebook export (the HTML file you email in or upload) had a few rough edges: Japanese exports failed outright, colored bookmarks turned into bogus highlights, and when several highlights shared a page their notes piled onto the first one. Rasul added Japanese support and Ibai fixed the bookmark and note handling, so every highlight now arrives with its own note attached.

🏷️ Fixed Bulk Tag Syncing — Tags applied to several Reader documents at once (multi-select or "add tag to all") weren't making it over to Readwise, which meant they were missing from exports to Notion, Obsidian, and the rest. Thanks to Ibai, bulk-applied tags now sync to Readwise just like single-document tags do.

📚 Fixed EPUB Uploads — Some EPUBs (including books bought from Thalia) failed to upload with a "Failed to read" placeholder, because their table of contents contained an entry with no link. Ibai made Reader tolerate that, so those books now open normally with their chapters intact.

🔗 Fixed Pocket Links — For highlights that came over from Pocket, the "View in Pocket" button on the highlight card still pointed at the now-defunct Pocket site. Ibai swapped it for the original article link, so you can open the source again.

💬 Fixed Ghostreader Timeouts — Asking Ghostreader chat something that takes a while on a long ebook (like "Pick up where I left off") could end with a "You're offline" error even on a perfectly good connection, because the chat connection gave up while the answer was still being prepared. Adam updated this to keep the connection alive until the reply comes through, so long answers arrive instead of getting lost.

🔍 Fixed Non-English Search — Searching your library for a term with accented or non-Latin characters (e.g. "grøn stær") could come back empty even when you had a document with that exact title. Piotr fixed how those terms were sent to the search index, which sharpens Ghostreader chat's library search, Quick Lookup in the Reader app, Readwise chat, and MCP search for anyone reading in languages beyond ASCII English.

📄 Fixed PDF Titles — Uploaded PDFs with Korean (and other non-Latin) titles could end up with a few wrong characters swapped in. Ibai fixed how PDF metadata is decoded, so titles now come through exactly as written in the file.

📑 Fixed Duplicate Highlights — Very long highlights (over about 8,000 characters) from Apple Books, O'Reilly, Libby, Twitter, and Diigo were being duplicated on every re-import. Rasul fixed the matching so those highlights are recognized as already saved and don't multiply.

🐦 Fixed Twitter Bookmark Setting — Reader's integrations page could show the "save Twitter/X bookmarks to Reader" toggle as on when bookmarks weren't actually being saved. Rasul made the toggle reflect what's really happening, so if it says that it's on, you can trust that your bookmarks are coming in.

📧 Fixed Custom Email Addresses — Personalizing your Reader email address could flash "already taken" for a name you'd only half typed, and if you hit Save quickly enough it could accept a taken name and then silently fail. Adam made the availability check keep up with your typing, so Save only lights up for a name that's actually available.

🎴 Fixed Review Mode Position — Opening Review Mode on a book in the Readwise app always started you back at the first highlight, even if you'd already worked through half of them. Ibai made it resume at the first highlight you haven't reviewed yet, and since that position is stored on your account, it also syncs across devices.

🕊️ Fixed Opening Tweets — Tapping "View source" on a saved tweet in the Readwise app opened an in-app browser instead of the Twitter/X app. Ibai routed source links through the system, so tweets (and YouTube, Medium, and anything else with a native app) open in the app that claims them, just like before.

🖼️ Improved Highlight Sharing — Johannes brought back the three-action share sheet in the Readwise app: a full-width Share image button with Save image and Share text side by side. Saving the generated card straight to your camera roll works again.

🔤 Improved Vietnamese Support — Titles in the Readwise app were rendering Vietnamese diacritics in a mismatched fallback font mid-word. Ibai swapped the title typeface for Plus Jakarta Sans, which covers Vietnamese natively, so titles render cleanly in one font.

📷 Improved Highlight Scanning — Scanned highlights in the Readwise app were dropping hyphens entirely. Johannes taught the scanner to tell a line-wrap hyphen from a real one, so hyphenated words survive the scan.

🧹 Fixed Small Annoyances — Ibai stopped the home screen wishing you "Good morning" at ten past midnight (it's evening until 5 AM now), and Johannes relabelled the "Page" field as "Page #" in the add-highlight flow.

📡 Fixed RSS Feeds — A housekeeping task could leave a feed subscription pointing at a deleted entry, after which that feed silently stopped delivering anything new. Krzys fixed the lookup so stuck subscriptions pick up where they left off on their next sync. He also stopped podcast feeds from dropping an entire episode just because its audio link was malformed; the episode and show notes now come through.

🛜 Parsing Updates — Krzys improved how Reader handles documents from washingtonpost.com, huggingface.co Spaces, the-tls.com, mv-voice.com, trouw.nl, scientificamerican.com, and news.zerkalo.io, and cleaned up stray empty bullet lists and "listen to this article" notices across all sites.

👍 Three recommendations from our team

From support specialist Romi

Something to read 📖
Romi has been immersed in an alternate world reading Piranesi. This novel combines mystery, a sense of wonder, a passion for science and everything beautiful, and leaves you wanting to know more and more.

Something to focus 🍄
Romi picked up these gummies out of curiosity once, mostly because the name sounded nice: 'Wonderfocus.' She never looked back. They leave her feeling sharper, more energized, and in a better mood.

Something to unwind 💿
Bon Iver was once Romi's favorite artist, then a few years passed without her picking up his albums. But she's been listening to SABLE, fABLE nonstop for the last few days.

💬 From the Readwise group chat

Spreadsheet chic

FDC found the ultimate offsite swag: a Hawaiian shirt made entirely of an Excel spreadsheet. It goes unbelievably hard, as the internet would say. Tristan raised the stakes: same shirt, but Reader UI. Honestly? We'd wear it. Merch committee, take notes.