Median Word Count
Half the works have fewer than 87,117 words, half have more. Use this as a reference point for expected length.
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 helps you estimate how long a given book will take to read based on your own pace. The archive's median word count is about 87,000 words, and the median reading time is roughly 379 minutes at a standard pace.
You can adjust the reading speed to match your own habits, and see which length category—short, medium, long, or epic—a particular book falls into.
Median Reading Time
At a typical pace, the median work takes about 379 minutes. Adjust the speed to see how your time varies.
Length Categories
Works are grouped into short (7), medium (20), long (31), and epic (33). This helps you gauge commitment at a glance.
Planning Your Reading with the Tracker
The Reading Tracker is a simple page-based progress tool. You enter the current page you're on, the total pages in the book, and a daily page goal. The tracker then estimates how many days it will take to finish, based on the remaining pages and your goal. Progress is saved in your browser's local storage, so you can close the page and return later without losing your place.
This approach works well for the longer titles in this archive, where a steady pace is more sustainable than trying to read a huge book in a few sittings. For example, "Mutiny Memoirs: Being Personal Reminiscences of the Great Sepoy Revolt of 1857 — Context and Discussion" is about 40,589 words. At the default 250 words per page, that's roughly 162 pages. If you set a daily goal of 20 pages, you'd finish in about 9 days. But you can adjust the goal to fit your schedule.
Setting Your Page Count
The tracker uses the total page count from the catalog when available. If not, it estimates pages by dividing the word count by 250. You can override this number with the total shown by your own reading app or edition. This is useful because page counts vary between print and digital formats. For "Mutiny Memoirs", if your edition has 180 pages, you'd enter that instead of the estimate.
The current page is where you start. If you've already read some pages, you can enter that number to get an accurate remaining count. The tracker doesn't record sections or minutes as progress — only pages. So it's best to use it alongside a physical or digital page counter.
Choosing a Daily Goal
The default daily goal is 20 pages, but you can set it to whatever works for you. A lower goal, like 10 pages, might be more realistic for a busy week; a higher goal, like 50 pages, could finish a book quickly. The tracker calculates estimated finish days by dividing remaining pages by your daily goal and rounding up. For "Mutiny Memoirs", if you have 162 pages remaining and a goal of 20, that's about 9 days. If you raise the goal to 30, it's about 6 days.
The estimated remaining time is proportional: it takes the estimated reading minutes for the whole book and scales it by the fraction of pages remaining. So if you're halfway through, the remaining time is half the total. This gives you a rough sense of how many hours you'll need to invest.
Using the Tracker with Longer Books
For a book like "Mutiny Memoirs", which is relatively short, the tracker might seem unnecessary. But for a longer work, such as "The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford — A Closer Reading" at 195,035 words (about 780 pages at 250 words per page), a daily goal of 20 pages would take about 39 days. That's a significant commitment, and the tracker helps you see it clearly before you start.
The tracker also lets you adjust your goal as you go. If you find you're reading faster or slower than expected, you can update the daily goal and the estimated finish date will adjust accordingly. This flexibility makes it a practical tool for planning your reading over weeks or months.