Quick reads
25 books are under 1 hour. These are short pamphlets or speeches, perfect for a focused introduction to a topic.
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.
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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 tool gives honest time estimates for each book. It uses the book's word count and a standard reading pace—about 230 words per minute. This is a rough guide, not a promise. Your actual time may vary.
You can filter by time bucket: quick (under 1 hour), steady (1-3 hours), immersive (3-6 hours), or marathon (6+ hours). The archive has 25 quick reads and 16 marathon-length works, so there's a range of commitments.
Steady reads
26 books fall in the 1-3 hour range. They offer substantive content without a huge time commitment.
Immersive reads
30 books take 3-6 hours. These are longer works that allow for deeper exploration.
Marathon reads
16 books exceed 6 hours. These are comprehensive tomes for dedicated readers.
Page by Page: Planning Your Progress Through a Long Book
The Reading Tracker is built around a simple idea: you make progress one page at a time. It records your current page, the total pages in the book, and a daily page goal. From those three numbers, it estimates how much time remains and how many days it will take to finish. No account is needed; the history is stored in your browser's localStorage, so your data stays on your device.
The tracker's page-based focus is deliberate. It doesn't measure sections read or minutes spent—it measures the concrete, verifiable act of turning pages. This keeps your progress honest and easy to update. If you read 15 pages one evening, you enter that number, and the estimates adjust accordingly. There's no ambiguity about what counts as progress.
Setting Up Your Page Count
When you start a book, the tracker needs a total page count. If the catalog provides one, it uses that. If not, it calculates an estimate by dividing the word count by 250 words per page. For example, Christian Schools and Scholars or, Sketches of Education from the Christian Era to the Council of Trent — A Closer Reading (id 294) has 332,039 words, so the initial estimate would be about 1,329 pages. That's a rough number, not a definitive one.
You can replace that estimate with the total page count from your own edition. Different editions have different page layouts, so your physical copy might have 1,400 pages or 1,200. The tracker lets you adjust, ensuring the remaining-time estimate is based on your actual book, not a generic calculation. This is especially useful for older texts that may have been re-typeset.
Daily Goals and Time Estimates
The default daily goal is 20 pages. That's a reasonable starting point, but you can set it to whatever fits your schedule. If you're reading a dense 26.8-word average sentence book like Christian Schools and Scholars, you might find 20 pages a day ambitious. On the other hand, a book with shorter sentences might allow you to read 30 pages comfortably. The goal is yours to set.
The tracker calculates estimated remaining time by scaling the catalog's estimated minutes to your progress: estimated_minutes × remaining_pages / total_pages. So if you're halfway through a book that was estimated at 1,444 minutes, you have about 722 minutes left. The estimated finish days are simply remaining_pages divided by your daily goal, rounded up. These numbers give you a realistic endpoint, which can be motivating for long books.
For example, if you're reading Christian Schools and Scholars and you've completed 300 pages of 1,329, with a 20-page daily goal, you have about 1,029 pages left, which translates to roughly 52 days. That's a long commitment, but seeing it in days rather than minutes makes it more tangible. You can adjust your goal upward if you want to finish sooner, or downward if you need a gentler pace.
Using the Tracker with the Rest of the Archive
The Reading Tracker is most useful when you pair it with the Book Finder and Compare tools. Use the Finder to select a book that fits your available time, use Compare to see how it stacks up against alternatives, and then use the Tracker to plan your actual reading. The tools are designed to work together, but each serves a distinct purpose.
The tracker's page-based progress is also a good way to stay grounded. When you're reading a long historical text, it's easy to lose sight of how far you've come. The tracker shows you the remaining pages and days, turning an abstract project into a series of manageable daily steps. It doesn't judge the quality of your reading; it simply helps you finish.