For students and anyone working through a reading list
See how the books on your syllabus connect
Course readings arrive as separate lists. Hikara keeps the books you read in one library, with your highlights and notes, and shows where they echo, challenge and bridge each other — across courses, not just within one.
The problem with reading for several courses
- Reading lists pile up across courses, each in its own silo.
- Every course feels separate, so you miss how its ideas connect to another's.
- Facts are harder to remember when you can't see the bigger picture.
- Essays ask you to synthesise across sources, and your notes are scattered.
How Hikara helps you study
Connect ideas across courses
Add the books from every course to one library. Hikara's AI compares them and scores each pair 0–100 as an echo (similar ideas), a challenge (opposing ones) or a bridge (an idea carried into another field), with a written explanation of why.
Keep highlights where you can find them
Save passages as you read, by typing them or photographing the page so the text is captured for you. Highlights are searchable, and each day Hikara brings one back, with older ones more likely, so they're fresher come the exam.
Find the argument for your essay
Challenges point you to the sources that disagree; bridges show where an idea from one field explains another. Both are good leads for an essay — check them against the text before you rely on them.
Question your books
Dialogues let you ask questions of up to five books at once, answered from the books' ideas and the passages you highlighted. A good way to test your understanding before a seminar.
Questions
Can I import my course reading list?
Not as a file. Add books by searching, upload screenshots of a digital library such as Kindle or Apple Books and let Hikara pick out the books, or import a Goodreads export in one go. Hikara works with books in the Google Books catalogue, so it doesn't import papers or PDFs.
Is Hikara free for students?
The free plan is free for everyone, with no time limit and no card: an unlimited library, highlights, reading tracking and a small monthly allowance of each AI feature, such as one Dialogue a month.
Can I cite Hikara's connections in an essay?
Cite the books, not the connection. Each connection's explanation is written by AI from what's known about the two books, so treat it as a lead and check it against the texts before you build an argument on it.
Bring your reading list into Hikara
Free to start, no card needed. Add books by search, or import your Goodreads library in one go.
Updated By Hikara Team
Related reading
- Feature
Reading tracker
Hikara tracks what you read (statuses, half-star ratings, notes and progress by page or by percentage) and helps you build the habit: a reading-session log, a streak protected by automatic freeze credits, yearly and per-book goals, and a short daily routine on the Reading tab.
- Article
What Your Reading Patterns Say About You
Your book choices create patterns that reveal your intellectual interests, growth areas, and blind spots. Here's how to read the patterns in your reading.
- Use case
Hikara for autodidacts
Build a self-directed curriculum where one book leads to the next. Hikara shows how your books echo, challenge and bridge each other, so your reading compounds.
- Article
Bookshelf Architecture: How to Organize a Library by Theme, Not Genre
Genre-based shelving is a bookstore convention, not a reader's tool. Theme-based shelving — physical or digital — surfaces patterns genre hides.
- Feature
Reading insights
The Insights page turns your library into answers: which themes you read most and least, a counter-read that argues with a book you've read, the themes in your highlights, and an AI-written portrait of you as a reader.
- Feature
Wrapped
Hikara recaps your reading every month on the Progress tab and every year in a year in review.