Quick Reads
Books under 200 minutes. These are perfect for a short project or a single sitting. For example, 'Dairy Disagreeables Busy the Bacteriologists' takes about 27 minutes.
Reading Tracker
Choose a book, record where you are, and set a daily goal. Your progress is stored in localStorage in this browser; it is not uploaded to a user account.
No sign-up required
Stored in your browser
Estimated time remaining
Choose a book
If the EPUB has no fixed print pagination, the tool starts with an estimated page count and lets you replace it with the page total shown by your own reader.
Reading progress
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Remaining
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Estimated time left
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At your daily goal
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Stored locally
Reading history
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How the progress estimate works
The Reading Time Estimator gives you a realistic estimate of how long it will take to read a book from this catalog, based on the median reading speed of the collection. The catalog's median word count is 58,076 words, which translates to about 253 minutes of reading at an average pace.
Each book's reading time is calculated from its word count and the median reading speed. You can use this to plan your reading sessions, whether you have a quick break or a long weekend. The estimates are honest approximations; your actual time may vary depending on your pace and familiarity with the subject.
Steady Reads
Books that take between 200 and 400 minutes. You can finish these in a few days with regular reading sessions.
Immersive Reads
Books that require 400 to 800 minutes of reading. These are substantial works that will occupy your evenings for a couple of weeks.
Marathon Reads
Books over 800 minutes. These are major undertakings, like Pliny's Natural History, which takes over 1000 minutes.
Using the Reading Tracker for Sustainable Progress
The Reading Tracker is a simple tool for keeping a book moving. It records your progress in pages, with a current page, a total page count, and a daily page goal. The default goal is 20 pages per day, but you can adjust it to fit your schedule.
The tracker does not measure time spent reading or sections completed; it is built around pages. This keeps the focus on a steady, measurable advance through the book.
Setting a Realistic Daily Goal
The tracker estimates the total pages from the word count, assuming 250 words per page when no fixed page count is available. For example, "Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. — Background and Themes" (id 230) has 28,765 words, which estimates to about 116 pages. With a 20-page daily goal, you would finish in roughly 6 days.
If you prefer a slower pace, you might set a goal of 10 pages per day, extending the finish to about 12 days. The tracker calculates the estimated finish days as the remaining pages divided by your daily goal, so you can see the impact of any change immediately.
A useful approach is to choose a goal that is sustainable for your routine. A goal that is too high may lead to skipping days; a goal that is too low may not feel like progress. The tracker lets you adjust at any time.
Adjusting the Page Count
The initial page estimate is a starting point. Your own edition may have different pagination, so the tracker allows you to replace the total page count with the number shown by your reading app or physical book. This makes the estimate more accurate for your specific copy.
Similarly, the current page is something you update as you read. The tracker stores your history in the browser's localStorage, so your progress persists between sessions without needing an account.
This flexibility means the tracker works for any edition, For readers who are reading a facsimile of a 19th-century volume or a modern reprint.
Using the Estimate for Planning
The estimated remaining time is proportional: it takes the catalog's estimated reading minutes and scales them by the fraction of pages remaining. So if you have read half of a book that was estimated to take 126 minutes, the tracker will show about 63 minutes left. This is a rough guide, not a promise, but it helps you plan when to finish.
For a book like "Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life.", the estimated reading time is 126 minutes. If you read 20 pages per day, you will finish in under a week, and the tracker will show the expected completion date.
The tracker is not about racing through a book; it is about making steady progress. By breaking a long work into daily page targets, it turns a daunting volume into a series of manageable steps.