Remember what you read. Remember what you thought.
A private book diary for readers who want to remember why they loved — or hated — a book. Build your own rating system, capture a 140-character verdict, and share only when you mean to.
Rate what mattered
One had perfect prose and no ending. The other broke my heart despite itself. A single number cannot tell them apart. Your marks can.
“Sentence for sentence the best thing I read all year. Then it simply stops, as though the author got bored of it.”
“I did not expect to cry at a book about a lighthouse keeper’s paperwork. I did. Twice.”
Your marks, not our model
Other reading apps build a richer database of books. Reading Shrimp builds a richer vocabulary for your taste — and the rating system adapts to the reader rather than making every reader fit the same system.
Ten categories to start with, and as many of your own as you like. Mark only the ones that applied — blanks are skipped rather than counted as zero. Weight the ones you care about most, or override the overall by hand.
One hundred and forty characters, hard-stopped. Short enough that you actually finish it, short enough to force the most distinctive reaction to the front, and long enough to still mean something in five years.
Search the catalogue for what a book did, not only what shelf it sat on — books other readers marked highly for narrative voice, for re-read value, or for a category they invented themselves.
Nothing is published by finishing a book. Your reading stays invisible to followers until you switch it on, a verdict is read by accepted friends and nobody else, and you are found by your exact handle or an invite link — never by a partial one. Local mode keeps the whole diary on your phone and never contacts the server at all.
The finishing ritual
That is the moment the app is built for. No questionnaire, no performance, no review to live up to — set the marks that mattered, say the true thing, and it is a small complete record you will still understand in five years. Shelves, dates and the to-read queue are here to support that, not to become the point.
The place where your finished books become your personal critical record.
The thoughtfulness of a reading spreadsheet, with the ease and beauty of a diary app. No streaks, no badges, no infinite feed, no popularity contest — and nothing that tells you what a good book is.