#serial reader

Serial Reader is a free app that lets you read books in the public domain, portioned out in chunks that take about 15 minutes to read on average. You get one chunk released to you every day. Their reasoning is that this serialization makes reading classics more exciting - and I think we've seen solid evidence of that with the success of Dracula Daily.

You add what book(s) you want to read - there's tons of categories to browse, or you can search if you have something specific in mind.

I'm reading Pride and Prejudice, and this screen shows my progress so far.

And here's where I go to see all my issues! Unread issues have an estimated reading time next to them.

I've been having a lot of fun with this! There's also the potential for buddy reads. As far as I know, there's no official in-app support for that, but all you'd need to do is start your novel on the same day as your friend.

As far as accessibility features go, the font selection includes dyslexic-friendly fonts, and the font size gets pretty darn big (I can't speak on whether it gets big enough to be considered an accessibility feature, but I would guess so.) It also has different color pallete options.

The paid version has more features, such as the ability to hilight and make notes, but the free version is very usable, and add-free!

So now that I’ve finished reading Dracula Daily, I’ve been thinking about all the different ways that I have enjoyed this story;

1. The first time I read it I did so through Serial Reader; an app that sends you small chunks of the story daily. It was great, but I didn’t always find the time to sit and read it so I ended up falling waaaay behind. Good way to read classics though

4/5 stars

2. Disney Dracula, Starring Mickey Mouse; yup, it’s exactly what you think it is, Dracula retold in comic form with Mickey and Friends. It’s not bad. It glosses over the scary parts, but sticks to the story pretty well. Fun for all ages

3/5

3. I got the free Audiobook last year from Audible last year and was excited that Tim Curry did the voice for Van Helsing. Forgot that Van Helsing only has a few entries to his name. The lack of Tim Curry made me sad. It was still very fun though and I enjoy listening to it.

4/5

4. Dracula Daily quickly started to gain speed with my tumblr mutuals and I managed to pick it up before Johnathan made it to the castle. Reading it over the time it took place gave me a better idea of the story’s pacing and time. I looked forward to getting my daily emails and kept pace the entire time. I missed it on days when there were no entries. I loved exploring the #draculadaily tag and enjoyed all the hot takes on what was going on. Who was shipping who; which was the current blorbo or poor little meowmeow. I laughed with everyone about Count De Ville in his straw hat and Mina being a train fiend. I felt like I was a part of this weird community more than I ever have and I’m so thankful for that.

10/5

There's the option to pay for the app and add your own books and most importantly new classical books are added by the creator of the app and they are unabridged.

★★★★✩

It's been some years since I read an Upton Sinclair book so I was thrilledntonfind this on the Serial Reader app.

Sinclair's writing is straightforward, and reads contemporary to today is which made reading this one pretty great compared to older classics. His writing in this one has a sense of vibrancy and fight that I remember from The Jungle but there's a lot of grit, woe, and the exploitation as the book depicts the rigged politics that keep corporations in power at the moment expense of the low working class, in this case, immigrants who came to the US for the American dream just find themselves covered in dirt and coal dust like much of their dreams.

It was a slow start but progressed steadily and I feel that this was a better read compared to The Jungle, and like that one, Sinclair researched this topic as well but it felt like a more put together, polished if you will. The postscript at the end highlights federal documents and reports pertaining to the Colorado coal strike of 1913-14 in which the book was based from.

⭐⭐⭐/5

It's been some years since I read Shakespeare and I honestly couldn't remember reading this one so I gave it a shot and for a short play, I found it to be slightly boring.

I know I said it, but compared to some of his other works, I did find this to be boring.

Maybe it's the pacing at the beginning but I found it to be messy and in some areas dull where in others slightly racist and pompous.

Granted that for the time the play was written the particulars I found to be racist were part of the every day and well within the time and language of the moment so I can gloss over it, the way that Shakespeare used instalust to gloss over a hasty rape attempt but this wasn't my favorite of the bard's work.