Readwise

Readwise is popular with Building A Second Brain. It's the bridge to gather highlights from various sources into one place in your second brain. I first took BASB in Spring 2020, and I tried Readwise out. But I didn't stick with it. I didn't think it was worth the subscription price. I did work with it more in the Fall because I was helping a student import Google Play Book highlights, which wasn't officially supported. I ended up sharing my code with the Readwise team, and they eventually offered a solution. I continued with my own workflow of manually copy-pasting article highlights into Roam. This had more friction, but I had a better idea of what was going into my second brain. I had seen others dumping in all their Readwise highlights and forming a graveyard of information that cluttered their second brain.

Things changed after Readwise announced their upcoming Reader app. That got me excited. They said that once that's released, prices will go up, and anyone who joins now will keep their current subscription price. So I jumped in.

After working with Readwise now, using Kindle more, and having more apps supported to import from (Hypothes.is, Moon Reader, some new podcast snipping apps), I started importing some of my past book highlights into Readwise. I've been doing the daily highlight reviews, which is pretty amazing. It resurfaces random highlights from books that I have forgotten. It's a great, passive way to refresh my memory on what I've read, as well as make connections with things I'm currently thinking about.