Quick Glance
For a short book like Travels in the Upper Egyptian deserts, with about 49,000 words, the estimated reading time is around 214 minutes. That is a manageable read for a few sittings.
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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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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Reading history
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How the progress estimate works
The Reading Companion estimates how long it might take to read a given book, based on its word count and an average reading pace of about 230 words per minute. The archive's median book has about 105,000 words, which would take roughly 456 minutes, or about seven and a half hours.
These numbers are honest approximations. Actual reading time varies with your pace and how closely you follow the text. Use the estimates to plan your reading sessions, whether you have a few minutes or a long evening.
Extended Read
A mid-length work such as Fragments of voyages and travels, with roughly 66,000 words, comes to about 287 minutes. You might spread that across a week or two.
Long Commitment
For an epic like Travels and discoveries in North and Central Africa, Vol. 5, with over 200,000 words, the estimate climbs to 876 minutes. That is a substantial undertaking, best approached in stages.
Reading Tracker: Planning a Page-Based Journey
The Reading Tracker helps you make steady progress through a travel narrative by recording pages read, not minutes or sections. You set a current page, total pages, and a daily page goal. If the catalog does not provide a fixed page count, the initial estimate is ceil(word_count / 250), using a configured words-per-page value of 250. You can replace that with the total page count from your own reading app or edition.
For example, Life and Travel in Lower Burmah: A Retrospect — Edition Insights has 78,093 words. The estimated total pages would be ceil(78093 / 250) = 313 pages. If you set a daily goal of 20 pages, the tracker estimates finish days as ceil(remaining_pages / 20).
Set a realistic daily page goal
The default daily goal is 20 pages, but you can adjust it to fit your schedule. A higher goal shortens the estimated finish time but may be harder to sustain. A lower goal spreads the reading over more days but keeps each session manageable.
For Life and Travel in Lower Burmah, a 20-page daily goal means about 16 days to finish (313 / 20 ≈ 15.65, rounded up to 16). A 10-page goal would take about 32 days. Choose a number you can maintain consistently.
Use the estimated remaining time to gauge commitment
The tracker estimates remaining time as estimated_minutes × remaining_pages / total_pages. For Life and Travel in Lower Burmah, the estimated reading time is 340 minutes. If you are on page 100, remaining pages are 213, so the estimate is 340 × 213 / 313 ≈ 231 minutes. That tells you how much more reading time to expect.
This estimate is proportional, so it adjusts as you progress. Early on, the remaining time is close to the total; near the end, it shrinks. It is a planning tool, not a promise.
Replace the total page count with your edition's number
The initial page estimate assumes 250 words per page, but your physical or digital edition may differ. If your edition has a different total page count, you can replace the estimated total with that number. This makes the remaining time and finish days more accurate for your specific copy.
For example, if your edition of Life and Travel in Lower Burmah has 350 pages, you would update the total to 350. The tracker then uses that number for all calculations.
Progress history stays in your browser
The tracker stores your progress history in localStorage on your current browser. No account is required, and the data does not sync across devices. If you switch browsers or clear your browser data, the history is lost. For long books, consider noting your progress elsewhere as a backup.
The tracker is a simple, private tool. It does not record sections or minutes as progress—only pages. This keeps the focus on the page-based reading experience.