A thousand books worth your remaining time, and an honest count of how many you have left. One Book of the Moment standing trial each month while the Librarian reads it in public. Pairs and small clubs, so you never have to read the great ones alone. That's the app: a candle against the pile of books you'll die not having read. New in this release: the app now reads in two lights. Candlelight is the room as built, dark and warm and lit for late hours. Paper is the same room at noon, dark ink on a bright page, for eyes that strain against light-on-dark type. The switch sits at the top of Settings and your choice sticks. Every screen was retuned by hand so both lights stay legible, down to the thousand tiny tiles of the Canon Conquest grid. One seat changed hands in the canon: Jon Fosse's Septology, seven parts and one unbroken sentence, takes the place of Milkman in the last-decade wing.

Most of you are opening this for the first time, so here is what it is for. YOU HAVE FEWER BOOKS LEFT THAN YOU THINK Give it your age and how fast you read, and it works out, from actuarial life tables, roughly how many books remain in your reading life. Not a slogan. Arithmetic. Most readers land somewhere in the hundreds, and the number tends to change what you pick up next. A THOUSAND BOOKS, AND AN ARGUMENT ABOUT EACH ONE The canon is one thousand books, which is more than you have left and small enough to be a real answer. Every one carries a case for reading it and a case against, written from what actual readers said, so you can be talked out of a book as easily as into it. Recommendation engines flatter you. This one is willing to lose. Mystery, Philosophy and the famous half of Literary Fiction are open to everyone; the rest of the thousand comes with Pro. NOBODY FINISHES A HARD BOOK ALONE The books that change people are the ones most often put down around page eighty. So take one with somebody. Two readers is a pair and costs nothing; three to nine makes a club, which is a Pro room. You see each other's progress and margin notes, and a note tied to a page stays sealed until the other reader gets there, so you are not spoiled on a book you are still inside. THE BOOK OF THE MOMENT One recent book stands trial in public while everyone reads it. A term runs about a month, the arguments accumulate, and at the end the book either earns a seat among the best of the last ten years or it doesn't. NEW IN THIS VERSION The Consultation. A new room, and the fastest way into the thousand. You give the Librarian up to five things you love, in any mix: books you would defend to a stranger, or just the qualities you are after. Dark. Spare. Mortality. Slow burn. Three books come back in order, each with one line telling you what you are in for. The first is open to every reader; Pro breaks the seal on the other two. Making that work meant going through all one thousand books and writing down what each one is actually about, as motifs and a one-line essence. The Librarian answers on that instead of on genre, so asking for spare and mortal does not simply walk you to the grief shelf. Text size. Four sizes in Settings, and the page grows under your finger as you tap. It stacks with whatever you have set in iOS Settings. Two changes on the shelves. David Attenborough's Life on Earth joins the science wing, which meant Conrad's Nostromo had to leave: the canon is exactly one thousand, so nothing enters without something going. And Being and Time now points at Cyril Welch's annotated translation from Yale, with its arguments rewritten from readers of that edition rather than the old one.

Most of you are opening this for the first time, so here is what it is for. YOU HAVE FEWER BOOKS LEFT THAN YOU THINK Give it your age and it works out, from actuarial life tables, roughly how many books remain in your reading life. Not a slogan. Arithmetic. Most readers land somewhere in the hundreds, and the number tends to change what you pick up next. A THOUSAND BOOKS, AND AN ARGUMENT ABOUT EACH ONE The canon is one thousand books, which is more than you have left and small enough to be a real answer. Every one carries a case for reading it and a case against, written from what actual readers said, so you can be talked out of a book as easily as into it. Recommendation engines flatter you. This one is willing to lose. NOBODY FINISHES A HARD BOOK ALONE The books that change people are the ones most often abandoned around page eighty. So you can take one with somebody: a pair, free, just the two of you, or a club of up to nine. You see each other's progress and margin notes, and notes stay sealed until the other reader reaches that page, so nothing is spoiled. THE BOOK OF THE MOMENT One recent book stands trial in public while everyone reads it together. A term runs a few weeks, the arguments accumulate, and at the end the book either earns a seat among the best of the last ten years or it doesn't. The first term is open now. NEW IN THIS VERSION Most of it traces to one reader who wrote in on day one. Good feedback is a gift; here is what it bought everyone. The type follows your settings now. The app honors the text size you chose in iOS Settings, the moment you change it, and the baseline runs a notch larger everywhere for everybody. The reader was right that it ran small; we should have caught it ourselves. Every opening question has a way past it. Only your age matters to the arithmetic, so the rest have outs now: no idea how fast you read, call it a book a month; keep your thieves and go on. The count bills you for nothing you didn't confess to. The Librarian goes first. If you took the taste quiz, your top recommendation stands on the home screen with its cover and one button under it: begin with this one. If you skipped it, the app tells you plainly what twenty questions would buy you. Browsing the thousand on your own remains a fine answer. And the Together page now opens with Calvino on the Other Reader, who at this same moment is also opening the book. Tap it for the rest. It is the best case for reading in company we know of, and we did not have to write it.

Most of you are opening this for the first time, so here is what it is for. YOU HAVE FEWER BOOKS LEFT THAN YOU THINK Give it your age and it works out, from actuarial life tables, roughly how many books remain in your reading life. Not a slogan. Arithmetic. Most readers land somewhere in the hundreds, and the number tends to change what you pick up next. A THOUSAND BOOKS, AND AN ARGUMENT ABOUT EACH ONE The canon is one thousand books, which is more than you have left and small enough to be a real answer. Every one carries a case for reading it and a case against, written from what actual readers said, so you can be talked out of a book as easily as into it. Recommendation engines flatter you. This one is willing to lose. NOBODY FINISHES A HARD BOOK ALONE The books that change people are the ones most often abandoned around page eighty. So you can take one with somebody: a pair, free, just the two of you, or a club of up to nine. You set how long you get, from a fortnight to ninety days. You see each other's progress and margin notes, and notes stay sealed until the other reader reaches that page, so nothing is spoiled. NEW IN THIS VERSION The Pilgrimage. One hundred bookshops worth standing in before you die, on one map you can walk. Powell's and Shakespeare and Company, an Alvar Aalto atrium in Helsinki, a Ming-era courtyard, a canal barge in London, a bomb shelter in Nanjing. Every shop was verified trading this year, photographed where a free photograph exists, and placed at its street door. Anyone can walk the whole map and read every room. A shop is checked off only when you have actually stood in it: ten of the hundred are free to mark, and the rest mark with Pro. Clubs. Reading rooms now run from three to nine readers. A room begins at two. Previously everyone waited for the last empty chair, which meant rooms sat dark for weeks. Now the reading starts as soon as a second reader sits down, and the remaining seats stay open. Choose your own term. Fifteen days to ninety, for a pair or a club. Some books are a fortnight's work, and a deadline you cannot meet is worse than no deadline. The daily verdict argues both sides at equal length now. The case against a book had been getting more column inches than the case for it, which is not a fair trial. Buying a book actually works again. The links to Bookshop.org, which support independent bookshops rather than Amazon, were broken. They are fixed.

Most of you are opening this for the first time, so here is what it is for: YOU HAVE FEWER BOOKS LEFT THAN YOU THINK Give it your age and it works out, from actuarial life tables, roughly how many books remain in your reading life. Not a slogan. Arithmetic. Most readers land somewhere in the hundreds, and the number tends to change what you pick up next. A THOUSAND BOOKS, AND AN ARGUMENT ABOUT EACH ONE The canon is one thousand books, which is more than you have left and small enough to be a real answer. Every one carries a case for reading it and a case against, written from what actual readers said, so you can be talked out of a book as easily as into it. Recommendation engines flatter you. This one is willing to lose. NOBODY FINISHES A HARD BOOK ALONE The books that change people are the ones most often abandoned around page eighty. So you can take one with somebody: a pair, free, just the two of you, or a club of up to nine. You set how long you get, from a fortnight to ninety days. You see each other's progress and margin notes, and notes stay sealed until the other reader reaches that page, so nothing is spoiled. NEW IN THIS VERSION Clubs. Reading rooms now run from three to nine readers, and any of them can start one. A room begins at two. Previously everyone waited for the last empty chair, which meant rooms sat dark for weeks. Now the reading starts as soon as a second reader sits down, and the remaining seats stay open. Choose your own term. Fifteen days to ninety, for a pair or a club. Some books are a fortnight's work, and a deadline you cannot meet is worse than no deadline. Buying a book actually works again. The links to Booksh

THE DAILY VERDICT — the whole room judges the same book each day. Cast your ruling in the morning; the tally unseals at dusk. A NEW WING: AI & Technology — 54 books on probation outside the 1,000, from Turing to the transformer wars. Free to walk. THE HEARTH — the librarian's own shelf, under a burning flame. Larger covers across the Today page, your margin note now lives on the Shelf beside the book you're reading, and new inductions across the wings. The court never adjourns.

The app now opens where you are: the book on your nightstand, your place in it, the notes in its margins. Each day the library hands back a line you kept and had forgotten. Finish a book and inscribe it in your own hand. And your books-remaining count now rests on an actuarial life table and the pace your shelf actually proves, a range honestly drawn instead of false precision. The candle is shorter than it was yesterday. Read something worthy of it.

The canon learned to argue. Every one of the 1,000 books now makes its case in the words of real readers — the case for, the case against, drawn from thousands of actual reviews and checked against the books themselves. No blurbs, no marketing copy. Readers who loved the book and readers who wanted their time back, both on the record. Also in this update: • The librarian's gift: the five face-up books from your reading now open in full, whatever wing of the library they live in. Yours means yours. • One knock at dusk, if you allow it. Each evening's notification names the book standing trial that night. And if your streak is one candle from going out, she'll tell you — once, before it's too late. Life's too short to read books that don't change it.

The cannon reached 1,000 books, the ones you need to read before you read anything else.

Name your Top 20 and a portrait develops. At twenty books it resolves into your Reader's Archetype — an engraved portrait, a case for you, a case against you, and the books from the wing you never enter. The Court now takes nominations. If a book you love is missing from the shelf, make the case. Twenty-five testimonies put it on the Librarian's desk, and a book argued in carries its provenance forever. Also in this version: larger captions throughout, a re-argued canon (some books left the shelf, three earned their way on), and small fixes to reading paths and locked pages.

The library is finished. Every one of the 1,097 books across all thirteen shelves now carries both sides of the argument: a case for reading it before you die, and an honest case against.

Minor structural changes and bug fixes.

The Last Book Shelf begins with a hard number: how many books you have left to read before you die. Enter your age and your reading pace, and the Librarian does the arithmetic. Most people are startled by the answer. From there, the app helps you spend that number well. A canon of more than a thousand books, each one chosen by a literature PhD and argued for in plain language. Argued against, too, because your time is finite and not every great book is for you. Take the taste quiz and the Librarian reads your answers like tarot, then searches the stacks for the books that belong in your hands. Name five that already blew your mind and she finds their lost kin. When you're ready to read, light the candle and set the hour. One book, nothing else, for as long as you asked. The app keeps the world out. There are quieter rooms when you want them. Write a letter to another reader about a single book. Build your Top 20 and find the strangers who share it. Read like it matters. It does.

Minor Bug Fixes.

New canon, new ways to share Eight new books in the canon: Bleak House, Emma, Things Fall Apart, Pale Fire, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, David Copperfield, The Portrait of a Lady, Housekeeping. Dickens, Austen, Achebe, Nabokov, Spark, James, and Robinson all properly represented now. The share system got a real overhaul. Three formats — square, story, link card. Three themes — candlelight, letterpress, stark. Every canon tab (Top 20, Books Left, Hell Yes, Quote) supports the full matrix. Real book covers in the share artifacts.

New welcome sequence. More robust database of books. Minor bug fixes.

Minor bug fixes.

— New Memoir category, 20 books. — Covers load offline. — A few onboarding adjustments.

-UX improvements -Added Candlelight focused reading -Minor bug fixes