Harry Clarke, 1919 (public domain)
Free English reading, level B1-B2
Read The Cask of Amontillado in Poe's original English
A short, tightly wound story of revenge, and a rare chance to actually finish a Poe tale in a single sitting.
Learn English with this book for freeThe Cask of Amontillado is short enough to finish in one sitting, but Poe's narrator speaks in dense, formal nineteenth-century English full of words a modern course never covers. Lira keeps the text exactly as Poe wrote it, but every unfamiliar word is one tap away from a translation, and every word you look up gets scheduled for review so the vocabulary actually sticks after the last line.
Key vocabulary from The Cask of Amontillado
A preview of the words you'll run into early on, with pronunciation. Every one of them, and every other word you tap while reading, gets saved to your review deck automatically.
injuries
wrongs, insults
vowed
swore, solemnly promised
revenge
revenge
impunity
freedom from punishment
catacombs
underground burial vaults
trowel
a small tool for spreading mortar
What actually happens while you read
One tap to translate
Click any unfamiliar word for its contextual translation, right inside the page. No dictionary tab, no losing your place in the story.
Every word saved with its sentence
The word you looked up keeps the exact sentence you found it in, not an isolated flashcard, so the meaning stays anchored to real context.
FSRS brings it back before you forget
Spaced repetition schedules each word's next review right before you'd naturally lose it, so vocabulary from this book actually stays with you.
The thousand of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I .
TRANSLATION
swore, solemnly promised
CONTEXT
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.
Start reading free →The science
Recognizing a word isn't the same as remembering it
According to Stephen Krashen's comprehensible input hypothesis, a language is acquired durably through exposure to content you mostly already understand, not through isolated word lists. Reading a real book supplies exactly that kind of exposure. Spaced repetition on top of it is what turns a word you translated once into one you actually remember weeks later.
Learning approach
Retention with Lira
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