Show HN: Alexandria, a New Way to Read the Classics
Move at a contemplative pace in Lightning Mode, then ask Virgil — your Socratic guide — for context, questions, or counter-arguments.
Virgil blends the depth of the entire classics catalog with a pedagogy crafted by Professor Zohar Atkins and tailors every conversation to your interests.
Features:
• Lightning Mode — focus by reading one sentence at a time. • Virgil — an AI tutor that explains passages, challenges your thinking, follows your curiosity, and remembers what excites you. • Build and Share your Bookshelf — curate favorites, get smart recommendations, and send highlighted quotes to friends; social bookshelves turn passive libraries into shareable conversations. • Daily Sparks — one thought-provoking excerpt every morning, plus a guided conversation with Virgil. • 4,000+ Works — all the most iconic thinkers, from Plato and Sun Tzu to Nietzsche and Jane Austen, plus hidden gems for adventurous readers.
Our Mission: to inspire learning as a way of life.
Available on the App Store and coming soon to Google Play.
(For some reason I'm finding Gloucester in King Lear oddly obscure. "The sea, with such a storm as his bare head/in hell-black night endured, would buoy up/and quench the stelled fires. All wrongs else subscribed/but I shall see the winged vengeance overtake such children." Stelled fire? Wrongs subscribed? I've got interpretations for those lines, but mostly I just live for that last line, which is awesome.)