Quick Reads
Books under 60 minutes are ideal for a single sitting. They include shorter essays and introductions, like 'The Game of Logic' and 'Have you an educated heart?'
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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Stored locally
Reading history
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How the progress estimate works
The Reading Planner provides estimates of how long it will take to read a book, based on its word count and the median reading speed for the library.
The library's median reading time is 250.5 minutes, but individual books vary widely. Use the tool to plan your reading sessions according to your available time.
Steady Reads
Works that take 60 to 180 minutes offer a moderate commitment, suitable for a few reading sessions. Examples include essays by Schopenhauer and Dewey's commentary.
Immersive Reads
Books requiring 3 to 6 hours allow deeper engagement, such as Santayana's 'Winds of Doctrine' or Schweitzer's 'Civilization and ethics'.
Marathon Reads
For those ready for a longer journey, marathon reads exceed 6 hours. Hobbes's volumes and Whewell's histories demand sustained attention but offer comprehensive insights.
Pacing a Long Work with the Reading Tracker
Some books in this library ask for a different kind of commitment than a quick essay or a short lecture. The Reading Tracker is built for those longer stretches, letting you measure progress in pages rather than chapters or minutes. Its estimates are deliberately simple, and that simplicity makes it a useful planning tool before you commit to a text.
What the Tracker Actually Measures
The tracker records your place by page: a current page, a total page count, and a daily page goal. When a fixed page count is not available in the catalog, the initial total is estimated by dividing the word count by 250 words per page. For a book like "The Greek Philosophers, Vol. 1 (of 2) — A Closer Reading", with its 146,554 words, that works out to roughly 587 pages. You can replace that estimate with the total shown by your own reading app or edition, which is often more accurate for a specific format.
Estimated remaining time follows a straightforward proportion: the catalog's estimated reading minutes are scaled by the fraction of pages left. If you have read 100 of 587 pages, the remaining time is about 638 × (487 / 587), or roughly 529 minutes. Estimated finish days are simply the remaining pages divided by your daily goal, rounded up. The default goal is 20 pages per day, but you can adjust it to match your actual reading habits.
Planning a Long Read
Consider a concrete example. With a 587-page estimate for The Greek Philosophers, a 20-page daily goal yields about 30 days of reading. If you know you can manage 30 pages on most days, that drops to roughly 20 days. The tracker's output changes immediately when you adjust the goal, so you can test different paces without committing to a schedule.
The tracker does not record sections or minutes as progress. That means a book with many short chapters, like the 21 text sections in The Greek Philosophers, will not show a sense of movement until you turn actual pages. For readers who like small wins, setting a lower daily goal—say 10 pages—can make each session feel more achievable, even if the overall timeline lengthens.
Adjusting for Your Edition
Page counts vary by edition, font size, and device. The catalog's estimate of 587 pages assumes 250 words per page, but a paperback with larger type might run 700 pages, while a dense digital edition could be closer to 500. The tracker lets you overwrite the total page count, and the remaining-time calculation adjusts accordingly. This is especially useful for public-domain texts that exist in many reprints.
If you replace the total with your edition's count, also consider updating the daily goal. For a 700-page edition, a 20-page goal means 35 days; a 25-page goal brings it to 28. The tracker's estimates are only as good as the numbers you enter, so taking a moment to set both values accurately will make the progress bar more meaningful.
Using the Tracker Alongside Other Tools
The Reading Tracker works well after you have chosen a book with the Finder or Compare tools. For a long work, you might start with a steady daily goal and adjust as you learn your actual pace. Because progress is stored in your browser's local storage, no account is needed, and your place is saved between sessions on the same device.