Quick Reads
Nineteen books fall into the quick category, with reading times under an hour. Ideal for a short sitting or a first taste of 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.
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 tool helps you plan a realistic reading session. Based on the median word count of the catalog, a typical book takes about 104 minutes to read. Individual books vary widely.
We provide reading time estimates derived from word counts, assuming an average reading speed. They are approximations, not promises. Use them as a rough guide to choose a book that fits your schedule.
Steady Reads
Nine books are steady, taking a few hours. They allow for a deeper dive without a major time commitment.
Immersive and Marathon
Five books are immersive and two are marathon-length. These are for readers ready to spend a significant amount of time with a text.
Page-Based Progress with the Reading Tracker
The Reading Tracker is built around a simple idea: progress is measured in pages, not in time or sections. You record your current page, the total pages in your edition, and a daily page goal. The tracker then calculates how many pages remain, how much time is left based on the estimated reading minutes, and how many days it will take to finish at your current pace. This page-based approach works well for historical mathematics texts, where a page can contain dense formulas or long paragraphs that are better measured by page turns than by minutes.
For a concrete example, take Archimedes — Key Ideas to Explore (id 235). This 20,434-word book has an estimated reading time of 89 minutes. If the catalog does not provide a fixed page count, the tracker estimates the total pages as ceil(word_count / 250), which for this book is ceil(20434 / 250) = 82 pages (since 250 words per page is the configured default). Setting a daily goal of 20 pages—the default displayed by the interface—would mean finishing in ceil(82 / 20) = 5 days, assuming you start at page 1.
Setting Your Total Page Count
The tracker allows you to replace the estimated total with the page count from your own reading app or physical edition. This is particularly useful for older texts where pagination varies between editions. For instance, Archimedes — Key Ideas to Explore might have different page counts in a Dover reprint versus a public-domain scan. By entering the exact total, your progress percentage and remaining time become more accurate.
If you do not have a specific edition in mind, the default estimate of 250 words per page is a reasonable starting point. It is a standard assumption for typeset pages, though it can overestimate or underestimate depending on the book's layout. The tracker's flexibility means you can adjust the total at any time without losing your current page or daily goal.
Calculating Remaining Time and Finish Days
The estimated remaining time is proportional: if you have read 20 of 82 pages, you have 62 pages left, and the remaining time is estimated_minutes × remaining_pages / total_pages, or 89 × 62 / 82 ≈ 67 minutes. This gives you a rough sense of how much more reading time the book will require, based on the original estimate. It is not a promise, but a planning aid.
The finish days calculation is straightforward: ceil(remaining_pages / daily_page_goal). With 62 pages left and a goal of 20 pages per day, you would need ceil(62 / 20) = 4 days. If you increase your goal to 25 pages, it becomes ceil(62 / 25) = 3 days. This helps you adjust your pace to meet a deadline, such as finishing before a library loan expires.
Tracking Progress Over Time
The tracker stores your progress history in the browser's localStorage, so you can return to the same browser and see your past sessions. No account is required, which means your data stays on your device. This is ideal for a long-term project like reading a 129,959-word compendium such as Memorabilia Mathematica (id 240), where consistent daily progress is more important than a single marathon session.
Because the tracker records pages, not sections or minutes, it encourages a steady, sustainable rhythm. You do not need to finish a chapter to log progress; simply moving from page 45 to page 52 counts. For a book like Archimedes, which has only 2 text sections, this page-based tracking is essential—waiting to finish a section would mean reading over 40 pages in one go. With a daily goal of 20 pages, you can make measurable progress without overwhelming yourself.