An AI generated and soulless framework
But it lacks substance. Everything suggested work feels like chatting with an LLM. Nothing is thought out, and clearly hasn’t been battle tested. It doesn’t work the way it feels at first glance. Navigating the see of classics is confusing. It’s easy to lose track of your things in a messy and unorganized UI.
You’re better off asking fable to make you your own app for reading great literature and curate your own experience locally. That’s what I’m doing at least.
I love it!
Beautiful app, excellent customer service
Premium sub includes thousands of books for logging. I messaged the team in-app and they added three books for me the same day. Amazing!
Response from developer
The Tolstoy calendar is a personal favourite too, a little reminder that even the giants kept to a schedule! Keep the requests coming, welcome to the canon.
Charging for publicly available classics is madness.
Response from developer
Hi Brenton, you're completely right and we'd never argue otherwise: nearly every text we hold is in the public domain, and Project Gutenberg is one of the great gifts of the internet! Penguin Classics never sold anyone a copyright either, what a good edition sells is the choosing, the typesetting, the ease... that's the tradition we're working in just built for a phone. The daily heart of the app is free and stays free: a work each morning with its introduction and extract, it's author profile, your reading list, your log, your own ranked canon. Premium is the deeper end for those that want it; a library of nearly 1000 works typeset properly for the screen, downloadable for offline, with rain or the sea playing softly behind the page if you like! Bloomy, a literary companion who has read all of it and will argue with you about any of it and can draw beautiful reading plans just for you. and we have no quarrel on libraries, we're devoted. We just wanted a librarian in your pocket, one who slides something surprising across the desk each morning (glad the desk at least looked nice) I'm sorry you felt the need to give 1 star. yours, Hal
Laurie
Response from developer
thank you! An app built on three thousand years of vocabulary and you've caught us without a word for what it is; that might be the finest compliment we've ever had. we'll keep trying to earn the new category.
Great UI, great use of AI
The content library is impressive. Their AI is well-trained on source material and quite personable. The main page that allows you to read a little bit from a classic every day is really compelling. I can’t recommend this app more.
Phenomenal
Response from developer
Thank you Karitzaa! Books are personal, so the app should be too. lovely to have you reading with us.
Gets your mind going again
They’re thinking of everything
So I support the developers who are building a great app that will help people with humanity’s most massive undertaking- literally.
Absolutely Fantastic
Response from developer
Thank you Benvienue! The design and attention to detail are the parts we sweat the most, so being clocked by another designer means a great deal. There's no higher compliment in this line of work than someone quietly recommending us to the people they love, we hope the app keeps earning that.
Excelent
Features and a few bugs
Great for new and experienced readers
The mix between reminiscing on quotes from novels that I’ve read, and then learning more about ones that I’ve maybe heard but not looked into, is very exciting and engaging.
Two examples of the use of this app is by my discovering of Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, through the quote and blurb of the day. Also, my reintroduction to 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Both of these are works that I plan on diving into after seeing them on the app.
Another interesting piece is the suggested readings and badges you can develop which will help you navigate to other works that you may not have heard of.
I recommend this app to anyone who is new or old in the classic literature space!
Response from developer
Carlos, this is exactly the kind of review that makes one feel the whole endeavour was worthwhile. Calvino and García Márquez waiting on your shelf is a very fine position to be in. Invisible Cities will rearrange how you think about cities; One Hundred Years of Solitude will rearrange everything else. Welcome to the canon, there's plenty more waiting.
Incredible app for literary lovers
Nothing works on iPad-Figured it out
Update: I was on the initial tutorial and didn’t realize I just needed to follow the step-by-step guides. :-)
Response from developer
Glad you cracked it! You saw an old version of the tutorial, which has now been overhauled. Thanks for sticking with it and enjoy the reading.
Has Potential
Why even have avatars?
Unless you’re not white then pay for premium for someone who looks like you. The main person on the premium avatars being advertised is a black person. All free avatars are whiter than snow.
Lol.
Insta Said It Was Free
Response from developer
Thank you for the feedback, you're absolutely right that many of these books can be found online - The Daily Canon is mostly about helping people find and discover great books, building a reading habit, and curating the perfect journey through our world's greatest literature. For those who enjoy reading inside the app, the subscription provides a beautifully designed reading experience, including a curated library with instant vocabulary lookup and the ability to save words to your personal lexicon, discussions with Bloomy (our literary companion) about highlighted passages or chapters, customisable reading themes and font sizes, and tools to track your reading cadence and habits over time. The subscription helps us cover development costs, and the ongoing work of curating and maintaining the library. We appreciate you giving the app a try, and thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts.
Lost me during the orientation tour
It was sort of crazy when you think of it that the blurb didn’t really try to put human editing into the commentary; its last sentence managed to do that thing where it generates a sentence or statement that might sound smart *if you’ve never looked at the text*, but does not actually say anything interesting about the reading. (And this is inside an application that is supposedly all about *reading*.)
Response from developer
Hi there, I wrote that blurb (last sentence and all) so the flatness is mine to answer for, not a machine's. But you're right, a closing line that sounds clever and says nothing about the text has no business in an app about reading!! and if that's what this one did, it's getting rewritten rather than defended. Sorry that it cost you the app before the rest could make its case.
love the concept but kinda clunky
i hate instagram!!!!!!!!!Response from developer
Thank you (you clearly care about the thing which makes the criticism worth more). On the AI worry… every blurb, design decision, and piece of copy is from a fleshy real human. Yes, LLM’s helps us to build faster, but nothing in the Canon is blindly generated. I'd rather earn that trust than just assert it, so we'll let the next few updates make the case for us. On accessibility, you're right. We have two text sizes in settings but that's isn’t the same as Dynamic Type support, and if the app fought your system settings then it failed you and we are so sorry. Larger touch targets included, it's going on the list to fix properly ASAP! Thank you for your feedback.
