I was re-reading Stephen Fry’s Mythos and A.C. Grayling’s Philosophy and Life, and both books reminded me of something I think is still underrated: LLMs as reading companions.

Both books are filled with things I don’t know enough about. In the case of Mythos, it’s Greek mythology. In the case of Philosophy and Life, it’s the ancient Greek philosophers, their historical context, the intellectual lineage, and all the background that sits behind the text.

While reading Mythos, because I was also writing a post around it, I kept running into questions that weren’t directly answered in the book. So I kept pulling out my phone and asking Claude. And it made the reading experience so much richer.

Greek mythology is vast, messy, contradictory, and full of multiple tellings. For example, in Stephen Fry’s version of the Prometheus myth, Prometheus molds humans out of clay and Athena breathes life into them. But, of course, there are other versions with small but meaningful differences. Having Claude explain those variants, the different interpretations, and the surrounding context made the whole thing far more interesting.

It was also useful in a much more basic way. The Greek mythological universe has so many names that I kept forgetting who was who, especially among the early Titans. So I kept asking, “Who is this person again?”, “Why is she important?”, “Where does he fit in?” And those quick refreshers helped me follow the book better instead of constantly losing the thread.

I had a similar experience with Philosophy and Life. When you’re reading about ancient Greek philosophers, it’s not just the argument on the page that matters. It’s also the world around it: who came before whom, what debates they were responding to, what later thinkers did with those ideas, and why a particular claim mattered at that point in history.

This is where LLMs are genuinely useful. They don’t just help you understand a difficult passage. They can also give you the historical, cultural, and intellectual context around what you’re reading. In a way, using an LLM while reading a book on an unfamiliar topic can feel like reading one and a half books: the book itself, and a personalized companion text that appears whenever you need it.

I think this use case is still phenomenally underrated. If you’re reading a challenging book, or a book on a topic you don’t know well, keeping an LLM next to you as a learning buddy can make the experience deeper, richer, and much more enjoyable.