What's new
Counting visits
- Canonize now counts its visits, to see how many people use it, with Cloudflare Web Analytics. It sets no cookies and doesn't recognize you from one visit to the next. The privacy page says what it collects.
Readers' picks
- New in the music canon is The Fame Monster, Lady Gaga's eight songs of dark dance-pop from "Bad Romance" to "Telephone", with its cover and where to listen. A reader suggested it.
- New in the film canon is The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky's film of his own novel, with its poster and where to watch it. A reader suggested it.
TV shows
- A new canon of 255 shows, from I Love Lucy and The Twilight Zone to The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and Severance, with the comedies, anime and landmarks like Saturday Night Live and Planet Earth. It's an early preview while we review its entries.
- Long-running shows name the seasons to watch, like The Simpsons' seasons 3 to 8 or four standout seasons of Survivor. Tick them off as you go, and the show is watched when you've seen them all. A show's length is the hours those seasons take.
- Shows can be Watching as well as Want to watch and Watched, with their own lists and chart in your Library, and Continue watching on For you.
- Filter a show by its network, from NBC and the BBC to HBO and Netflix. Each show's page says where it's streaming in the US.
- Shows connect to what they drew on, on the map and across the canons, from Frasier's start in Cheers to The Sopranos' debt to Goodfellas and The Good Place's to a book of moral philosophy.
- Not sure where to begin? Where to start offers The Twilight Zone, Breaking Bad and Succession.
Hundreds of new connections
- Every canon's map has more lines between its works, about 700 more in all, found in what writers, directors and musicians have said about their own work and in reference works like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Each says where it comes from.
- Connections now run between canons too. U2's War sets Psalm 40, The Matrix is built on Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, and Harry Potter's ill-fated Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers come from Spinal Tap's drummers.
- Films link to the novels and plays they're made from, even under another name, like Blade Runner from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Apocalypse Now from Heart of Darkness.
Fiction
- A new canon of 354 novels, plays, epics and story collections, from The Iliad and Shakespeare to Middlemarch, The Lord of the Rings and Pachinko. It's an early preview while we review its entries.
- Not sure where to begin? Where to start offers The Odyssey, The Great Gatsby and The Road, one from each age.
- A series that's read as one, like Harry Potter or A Song of Ice and Fire, is one entry. Tick off its books as you read them, and it's finished when you've read them all. Bringing in your Goodreads library ticks the ones you've read.
Covers, posters and where to watch
- Books now have their covers and films their posters, on each work's page and in your lists.
- Each film's page says where you can stream it in the US, or rent or buy it when it isn't streaming, with the date that was checked. Each book's page links to Amazon.
- A new Credits page, linked from the bottom of the home page, says where Canonize's facts and pictures come from.
Better picks from your notes
- Recommendations based on your notes now match only what a note is really about, so an everyday word like "those" or "even" no longer turns up a book.
Four albums in
- New in the music canon are the Dismemberment Plan's Emergency & I, Billy Bragg and Wilco's Mermaid Avenue, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik and Drive Like Jehu's Yank Crime, with their covers, streaming links and connections.
- A reader suggested Yank Crime, the fourth 1990s rock album in line for a place. The three just ahead of it came in with it, so it didn't skip the queue.
Five works out
- Nitin Sawhney's Beyond Skin, Sault's Untitled (Black Is) and Parannoul's After the Night have left the music canon, and The Phantom Menace and The Force Awakens have left the film canon. The original Star Wars trilogy stays.
Suggest a work
- Think a canon is missing something? Suggest a work for it, from the Canons tab or when a canon's search comes up empty. You can suggest works for the four canons we haven't built yet, too.
- We look at suggestions every day. Leave an email address, or be signed in, and we'll tell you whether yours was added, and why if it wasn't. For a canon still to come, we'll tell you when it's built.
Half stars
- Ratings now go in half stars, from ½ to 5. On a work's page, tap the left half of a star for the half star and the right half for the whole one. Your lists, the feed and friends' profiles show them, and the rating filter adds a 4½★ chip, say, once you've given one.
Bring in your Goodreads, Letterboxd, 1001 Albums Generator and Spotify history
- On Your reading, pick your Goodreads library export, and the canons' books on it come in, with what you've read, your ratings and the days you finished, what you're reading, and your want-to-read shelf.
- On Your watching, pick your Letterboxd export, and the canon's films come in, with your ratings, the day of your first viewing, and your watchlist.
- On Your listening, type your 1001 Albums Generator project's name, or pick your Spotify streaming history, and the canon's albums you've heard come in, on the days you heard them.
- Each lists what it found for you to check before anything is marked, and can be undone. Works you've already marked keep their status, and get your rating or date if they had none. Your files are read on your device and never uploaded.
- Connections, in your account menu, gathers them all with Last.fm, says what each brings over, and shows which you've used.
- Your friends see an import as one line in their feed, such as "imported their reading history from Goodreads", with a link to everything it brought in.
Four tabs, Pick one for me, and your lists by rating
- Canonize now works like an app, with four tabs along the bottom of your phone (or across the top on a bigger screen). Canons has the maps, For you has your recommendations from every canon, Library has your lists, charts and notes, and Friends has your feed.
- The home page is shorter, with a card for each canon. Your lists now show album covers.
- For you shows the books you're reading in a canon above its recommendations, with how far along you are in each.
- Can't decide what's next? Your want-to-read, want-to-watch and want-to-listen lists now have a button that picks one at random, including the ones you've marked to come back to. Don't like the pick? Ask for another.
- Your finished, watched and listened lists can show just one rating at a time, from 5★ down to the ones you haven't rated yet.
- Works you've marked to read, watch or hear again can now turn up in your recommendations, at most one at a time, with how you rated them the first time.
Your albums from Last.fm
- If you scrobble with Last.fm, connect your username on Your listening. From then on, an album you've played four in five tracks of is marked Listened, on the day you heard it, and you're told which.
- Import what you've already heard, too. Canonize finds the canon's albums in your Last.fm history and lists them, ticking the ones you've mostly played, for you to check before they're marked.
Four albums in, three out
- New in the music canon are Travis Scott's Astroworld, Playboi Carti's Whole Lotta Red, Three 6 Mafia's Mystic Stylez and Lil Ugly Mane's Mista Thug Isolation, with their covers, streaming links and connections.
- Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory and Bad Bunny's YHLQMDLG and Un Verano Sin Ti have left it.
Reading counted on the day you log it
- When you log a book's pages, the reading chart now counts them on the day you enter them. It used to spread them over the days since your last update, so a day you didn't read could show some pages. A book you read without logging pages is still spread over the days you were reading it.
Which song samples which
- In the music canon, every sample now names the song on the later album and the song it samples, as in "It Ain't Hard to Tell" on Illmatic sampling Michael Jackson's "Human Nature".
- Checking each one turned up ten connections that weren't samples of the album named, such as a sample of another singer's recording of the same song. They've been removed.
Canons on the way
- The home page now lists the canons planned next: novels, TV shows, video games and board games.
Filters that know about each other
- Each filter now offers only what the other filters leave, with counts to match. Choose the 1960s, and the Genre filter lists only the genres of 1960s albums, each with how many there are.
Want to re-read
- Mark a book you've finished as Want to re-read, in Christian Writings and Philosophy, as you already can with films and albums. It stays finished, and it also shows on your want-to-read list.
Filter from any album, and a calmer map on phones
- The tags on a work's page, like Grunge, Rock or US & Canada, are now buttons. Tap one to see every work that shares it, highlighted on the map or filtered in the list. The filter stays on while you open one after another, and the filters in force show above the list and map, each a tap from gone.
- On a phone, opening or closing a work no longer swings the map out and back in, and picking a search result puts the keyboard away so the details can be read.
- Drag a work's details down from the top to shrink or close them, rather than reloading the page. The close button is bigger too.
Album covers, streaming links and a smoother map
- Every album's page now shows its cover, from the Cover Art Archive, and links to listen on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music, plus Tidal, Deezer, Amazon Music or Bandcamp where the album is there. Where we don't know an album's page on a service, the link searches that service for it.
- On a phone, tapping a work on the map opens its details in the lower half of the screen, with the work and its connections highlighted on the map above. Drag the handle up for the full details, or down to close them.
- The map pans, zooms and resizes much more smoothly, above all on phones and in the music canon.
Emo, and more albums people asked for
- Emo now has its own subgenre in the music canon, with six new albums including American Football, Sunny Day Real Estate's Diary, Brand New's The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, Jimmy Eat World's Clarity, Cap'n Jazz's Shmap'n Shmazz and the Brave Little Abacus's Just Got Back From the Discomfort—We're Alright.
- Also new are The Mars Volta's De-Loused in the Comatorium, Ween's The Mollusk, Invisible's El jardín de los presentes, the Microphones' Mount Eerie and Comus's First Utterance. Maxinquaye and Duck Rock have left the canon.
A music canon
- A fourth canon, Music, maps 1,000 essential albums from the 1950s to today across rock, pop, hip-hop, soul, jazz, folk, electronic music and metal, with the most acclaimed records from Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Each album says what it is and why it matters.
- Connections show how albums lead to one another. You can see influences and sequels, samples and covers, and the people albums share, from band members to producers and players. For example, Amnesiac continues Kid A, Blackstar draws on To Pimp a Butterfly, and R.E.M.'s Document covers Wire's "Strange".
- Filter albums by artist, subgenre, region, decade and running time.
- Mark an album Want to listen or Listened. New home page buttons open a chart of the albums you've heard over time, your listened list and your want-to-listen list.
- Recommendations now count a sequel or a direct influence for more than a looser link, like a shared producer, in every canon.
Want to re-watch
- Mark a film you've watched as Want to re-watch, or an album you've heard as Want to re-listen. It stays watched, and it also shows on your want-to-watch list.
Friends page fixed on phones
- On a phone, the Books read and Films watched buttons no longer squeeze a friend's name out of view. When there isn't room, they move onto their own line below the name.
Films counted as watched
- The film canon's periods now say how many films they hold and what share you've watched, instead of "works" and "read".
- Hovering over a film on the map shows Want to watch or Watched, not Want to read or Finished, and a film's page calls it a major film rather than a major work.
- Your friends page has a Films watched button beside each friend, next to Books read.
More of the films people love
- The film canon now has 351 films, with far more from the 1970s to today. Blockbusters and crowd favourites like Grease, Ghostbusters, The Lion King, Inception, Frozen and Barbie now sit alongside the critics' landmarks.
- The oldest films are now the essential ones. Some silent and classic-era films were taken out to make room.
- About a hundred new connections, including sequels like Return of the Jedi and Top Gun Maverick, remakes like The Departed, and influences such as Joker drawing on Taxi Driver.
- The film canon's "Where to start" now begins with films that are both hugely popular and acclaimed, from the 1970s on, such as Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Toy Story. Narrow it to an older period to start there instead.
- A film now links to the book it adapts in another canon, and the book links back. Diary of a Country Priest leads to Bernanos's novel in Christian Writings.
- If you marked a film that has now left the canon, your mark is kept, and it will show again if the film returns.
A film canon
- A third canon, Film, maps 296 films from 1902 to today, grouped by period from the Silent Era to Since 2000. It covers critics' landmarks, the popular films that changed how movies are made, and cinema from around the world.
- Connections show which films influenced which, along with sequels and remakes. For example, A Fistful of Dollars remakes Yojimbo, and Star Wars draws on The Hidden Fortress and The Searchers.
- Filter films by director, cast, runtime, country and movement. Each film's page shows who directed it, who's in it and how long it runs.
- Mark a film Want to watch or Watched. Film notes are Liked, Didn't like, or To remember.
- New home page buttons open a chart of the films you've watched over time, your watched list, and your want-to-watch list. Films you saw before you started tracking count as your starting total, as books do.
- Recommendations, friends' feeds and profiles now speak of watching as well as reading.
Everything a friend has read
- See everything a friend has read, numbered in the order they finished it and grouped by year, newest or oldest first. Tap "Books read" beside them on your friends page, or the link on their profile. It's on your own profile too.
- Books they read before they started tracking are listed separately, since there's no date to put them in order.
Your friends' reading kept separate from yours
- Fixed a friend's progress and shared notes showing up as your own. For example, a book a friend was reading could show as Reading for you even though you'd finished it. Your own progress was never changed unless you edited that book while it was wrong.
Friends
- New accounts choose a username when they sign up, and you'll see right away whether it's free. If you already have an account, you'll be asked for one the next time you visit.
- Add friends by their username or a link they share. They see your reading once they accept, and you see theirs.
- A feed shows what your friends have been reading, day by day. You'll see who started a book, how many pages they read, what they finished and how they rated it, and the notes they shared.
- Every reader has a profile page. It shows their progress in each canon, their last seven days, what they're reading now, and, if they add them, their name and a favorite work from each canon.
- Notes are private unless you tick "Share with friends".
- A bell at the top shows when you have a friend request.
- Friends never see your email address. The privacy page sets out exactly what they can see.
Your books, and sorting by length
- New buttons on the home page take you straight to what you're reading, everything you've finished, and your whole want-to-read list, from both canons together.
- Each list shows what matters for it. Books you're reading show how far you've got, finished books show your rating and when you finished them, and want-to-read books show their length and difficulty.
- Sort a canon's list by length, shortest or longest first, as well as by date. Each work shows its page count.
Credit for what you read before
- Books you read before you started tracking no longer look like a thousand pages in one day. They're your chart's starting point, counted in your total but not as reading on any day.
- Marking a book Finished that wasn't on your list or marked Reading counts it as read before. To change that, use the new "Read before I started tracking" box on the book's page.
- The chart starts near your starting total, so the reading you do from here on stands out.
- Pages now count across the days you were reading a book. Mark a book Reading when you start it and Finished when you're done, and each day in between gets its share, even if you never enter page numbers.
Your reading, charted
- A new "Your reading" button on the home page opens a chart of your pages read over time, across every canon or one at a time.
- Switch to "Last 7 days" to see how much you read each day this week.
- A finished book counts on the date you finished it, if you give one, so books you read years ago don't all land on the day you marked them.
Nothing lost on a weak connection
- Fixed a note disappearing when your phone's connection dropped before it reached your account. It now stays on your device, marked "Saving…", and is sent again once you're back online or reload the page.
- Your reading progress, ratings, and page counts now work the same way. A change that hasn't reached your account is kept, never undone.
Notes, reading progress, and difficulty
- Write notes on any work, sorted by what you liked, didn't like, agreed with, disagreed with, or want to remember. Your notes page gathers them all, work by work.
- Recommendations now read your notes. Say what you liked about a book, and the picks include others that take up the same subjects, with the note they came from.
- Recommendations now follow how much you've read. The more works you've finished, and the harder they were, the likelier your picks include difficult ones. Newer readers see more approachable works first, though nothing is ruled out.
- Reading a book? Enter how many pages your copy has and how far you've got, and a bar shows how much is left. Those pages count toward your pages read.
- Every work now has a difficulty, from easy to very difficult, shown on its page. Filter the map, the list, and your recommendations by it.
- The "What are you in the mood for?" box is gone. It matched words, not meaning, and missed too often. Narrow your picks with the filters instead, which now apply as soon as you change them.
- Signed in, your notes and page counts are saved to your account like the rest of your progress.
Free copies of philosophy classics
- 153 works in the Philosophy canon now link to a free copy you can read online, from Plato's dialogues and Aristotle to Kant, Nietzsche, and Whitehead's Process and Reality.
- Every link is a public-domain translation or one its translator or publisher has made free.
Philosophy filled in, and better recommendations
- Every work in the Philosophy canon now has its "What it is" description.
- 74 new connections, mostly for works that had none, from Nietzsche on Socrates' last words in the Phaedo to Kant calling Grotius one of "Job's comforters", and Bayle's Dictionary in Hume and Voltaire.
- 144 more connections are now checked against the works themselves or a reference source; 78 are still marked Unverified.
- The Philosophy canon's works are no longer marked as drafts.
- On phones, recommendations now sit in a small box above the list that you open when you want them.
- No more than one of your three picks comes from your want-to-read list.
- Once you've read a few works, the picks lean toward important works in genres and traditions, and by authors, you haven't read yet.
- The Philosophy canon no longer recommends a book the Christian canon is already recommending.
- When you type what you're in the mood for, the picks are the works that best match what you asked, nothing else. Name a title and it comes first.
- You can ask for something "old", "recent", "oldest" or "newest", and "short" or "long" now rules out works that don't fit.
- Every work in both canons now has an approximate length, with a suggested portion for the longest.
Philosophy
- A second canon, Philosophy, with 350 works from the Presocratics to the present, including the Islamic and Jewish philosophers who shaped the West.
- 343 connections between them, from Aristotle answering Plato's Republic to Rawls building on Locke, Rousseau and Kant.
- Works in both canons, like Augustine's Confessions and Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, keep your progress in both and link the two maps.
- The canon is still a draft. Some works don't have their "What it is" description yet, and connections marked Unverified haven't been checked against a source.
- On the home page, each canon's recommendations now open from under its card.
- The Christian canon's works are no longer marked as drafts.
Recommendations
- Three recommended works on the home page and on each canon's page, each with the reason it was picked. New here? They're a place to start.
- Ask for something specific by typing what you're in the mood for, or narrow it by length, era, tradition, or genre.
- Recommendations follow what you've marked and rated, and you can mark each one straight from the card.
- Fifteen new connections between works, such as the Nicene Creed's place in later creeds and prayer books.
Accounts
- Sign in with a link or a code sent to your email. There's no password.
- Signed in, your reading progress is saved to your account, so it's there on any device where you sign in. Anything you marked before signing in moves into your account.
- The first time you mark a work without signing in, a note explains that your progress stays in that browser.
- This page, and a short page on privacy.
First public preview
- The Christian Writings canon, 200 works across twenty centuries, as a map of influence and as a list.
- Built for phones, with a vertical timeline map, the list as the starting view, and filters in their own panel.
- Filter by importance, by your reading progress, and by length.
- Each connection between two works names both and says how the later one draws on the earlier.
- Page counts, a recommended portion of the longest works, and links to free copies online.
- A Feedback link on every page, and "Report it" on each work.