01 · Dark academia
The Poets
House of the Long Candle
Knowledge is a debt, and it always collects.
- dark academia
- classics
- literary
A reading guild in five houses
House of a
Reader
Some books you read.
Others keep score.
Swear to a house. Log the pages you were going to read anyway. Meet other readers. Form private or public book clubs. Watch a shelf become a record of every late night you refused to end. Always free.
- 5
- Houses
- 20
- Honours
- 4
- Seasons
Five houses · choose once
Where do you belong?
Your house tints the entire interface, bends your XP toward the genres you love, and decides whose company you keep in the hall.
The realm · your first screen
Open the app at eleven.
Everything is already waiting.
Not a dashboard. A room that changes while you sleep — quests set, honours edging closer, your guild busy without you.
Read 25 pages
18 of 25 · finish before midnight
+50 XP
Sarah just conquered Iron Flame.
Three minutes ago · 1,240 XP
Dragon Rider
Seven books with dragons in them. Three to go.
The Long Bright Season
Two rites of four · a limited theme at the end of it
Emma opened A Court of Mist and Fury.
You warned her. You did not stop her.
- 1,284
- Pages
- 6
- Nights
- 2
- Conquered
Longest night · 214 pages
❧
The guild · chat, courts and conspiracies
You do not read alone.
Someone is always awake.
Every house has a chat that never closes — the place you find the four other people who are also on chapter thirty-four at midnight. Then make a smaller guild for the friends you actually text, with quests you can only finish together.
The Morally Grey Book Club
8 readers · invitation only
ChatCurrent readChallengesRankings
Sarah11:41pm
chapter 34. CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.
Emma11:42pm
do not say another word, i am on 31
You11:44pm
i finished at 3am and i regret nothing
42
Priya is typing…
Say something unforgivable…
Your court
The Fae Court
127,382 sworn
Battle of the courts
Dragon Riders42.8M
Fae Court41.2M
Nightborn38.7M
Your guild · friends only
Make your own, for eight
A private room inside your court. Shared quests, shared treasure, and a leaderboard nobody escapes.
Guild quest
2 days left5,000 pages, collectively
3,821 / 5,000
- 01Sarah3,420 XP
- 02Emma2,810 XP
- 03You2,640 XP
✦
The reliquary
Twenty honours,
most of them incriminating.
The House notices patterns you would rather it didn’t — what you reach for at 2am, how many enemies you have watched become lovers, exactly how spicy your year has been.
Enemies Become Lovers
Finish 5 enemies-to-lovers books.
Dragon Rider
Finish 10 books with dragons in them.
Scandalous Scholar
Finish 10 books rated three peppers or hotter.
Ancient Scholar
Finish 10 classics.
Creature of the Night
Log reading after midnight 20 times.
Current season
The Autumn Semester
“Term begins. Attendance is not optional; it is inevitable.”
The corridors lengthen and the reading lists grow teeth. Complete the semester before the last leaf falls. Finish all four rites and a limited profile theme is unsealed — available only while the season lasts.
- 01
Read one gothic novel
A house, a secret, and weather with intent.
- 02
Read a book over 500 pages
Something with weight in the hand.
- 03
Read a book involving forbidden magic
Blood magic, necromancy, bargains — anything the faculty banned.
- 04
Read a dark academia novel
Cloisters, obsession, and at least one unwise friendship.
✦
Before you cross
Questions asked at the door.
- What is House of a Reader?
- House of a Reader is a free place to run a book club — public or private — shaped like a fantasy guild. You and your club choose a book, talk about it in a chat that never closes, and log the pages you each turn. Those pages count toward a challenge the club shares and toward your own XP, levels, streaks and honours. Every reader also swears to one of five houses, which comes with a hall full of people reading the same kinds of books.
- How do I start a private book club?
- Found a circle, give it a name and a creed, and it is private by default. Private circles never appear anywhere others can find them: the only way in is the invite code, which you send to whoever you want. Set the book the club is reading, and everyone's pages start counting toward the group's weekly challenge. There is no limit on how many circles you can be in, and no cost to any of it.
- Can I join a public book club?
- Yes. Public circles are listed for anyone in the House to browse, ordered by how many members they have so you land somewhere with a conversation already happening. You can join outright, without waiting to be approved. If a circle turns out not to suit you, you can leave at any time.
- What is the difference between a public and a private book club?
- A private circle is invisible and invite-only — it exists for the friends you already text, and nobody finds it by accident. A public circle is listed in the House for any reader to discover and join. Circles are created private, so a club founded for four people never quietly becomes a public room. The founder can change that, and can remove anyone who does not belong.
- Is it free?
- Yes, entirely. There is no subscription, no paid tier and no advertising. Book clubs, quests, honours, seasons, houses and messages are all available to every reader at no cost. We sell merchandise on our Shop for house members.
- How is it different from Goodreads or StoryGraph?
- Most reading trackers are catalogues you file finished books into, with book clubs bolted on as a discussion board. Here the club is the point: a room with a book, a chat, and a target the group is working at together. It also rewards the act of reading rather than the act of finishing — you log pages as you go, keep a nightly streak alive, and earn honours for patterns in what you read. The social side is a house you belong to rather than a feed you scroll.
- What are the five houses?
- The Scholars, the Fae Court, the Nightborn, the Dragon Riders and the Alchemists. Each is tied to a set of genres, tints the whole interface in its colours, and has its own chat hall and standing in the seasonal leaderboard. You choose once, during the rite of entry.
- How does the XP and levelling work?
- Every page you log earns XP. XP raises your level and your rank title, and it also counts toward your house's total in the seasonal standings. Daily and weekly quests — read twenty-five pages, read after nine, write down a thought — pay out extra XP when you claim them, and some weekly quests open a treasure chest.
- Where do the books come from?
- Book details and cover images come from Open Library, so you can search almost any title or author and add it to your shelf in a couple of taps. Page counts can be edited if the catalogue has them wrong.
- How many people do I need for a book club?
- One. A circle works for two friends reading the same book and it works for forty strangers, and a public one fills up on its own. The shared weekly challenge is measured in pages read collectively, so a small club simply takes longer to finish it than a large one.
- Do I need to finish a book for it to count?
- No. Pages count the night you read them, whether or not you ever finish the book. Finishing earns extra honours and marks the volume as conquered, but an abandoned book keeps every page you logged against it.
- What data does it keep about me?
- An email address, a hashed passphrase, your character, and what you log and write. It is never sold, never given to advertisers, and never used to train models. Deleting your account erases all of it immediately.
This is not a reading tracker.
It is a threshold.
Create a character. Swear to a house. The first fifty pages are already worth something.