Quick Reads (under 30 minutes)
The majority of the archive falls here—89 stories are 'short' and 89 are 'quick.' Examples include 'Stellar Vengeance' at 20 minutes and 'Earthmen Die Hard!' at 21 minutes.
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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Stored locally
Reading history
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How the progress estimate works
The reading tool provides estimates for how long it will take to finish each story, based on its word count and an average reading speed of about 220 words per minute. These estimates are approximate but offer a useful guide for planning your reading time.
You can browse the catalog by reading time, from quick reads under 30 minutes to longer stories that take over an hour. Most stories in the archive are short, with 89 falling into the 'quick' category.
Steady Reads (30–60 minutes)
A smaller set of stories requires a bit more time. 'The Old Way' is 57 minutes, and 'Machine of Klamugra' is 42 minutes. These still fit in a lunch break.
Longer Stories (over 1 hour)
A few stories, like 'The Old Ones' at 92 minutes and 'The laughter of Toffee' at 112 minutes, offer a more substantial reading experience. Plan accordingly if you choose one of these.
Planning Your Reading With the Tracker
The Reading Tracker is a simple tool for keeping a page-based record of your progress through a book. It does not track minutes or sections; it works in pages. You set a current page, a total page count, and a daily page goal. The tool then estimates how many days it will take to finish, based on your goal.
Setting Up Your Book
When you open a book like "Kill Me if You Can! — Reading Companion" (id 271), the tracker may not know the exact page count. In that case, it uses a default of 250 words per page. That story has 7,411 words, so the initial estimate would be ceil(7411 / 250) = 30 pages. You can accept that estimate or replace it with the page count from your own reading app or print edition.
The daily page goal defaults to 20 pages. For a 30-page book, that means you could finish in about two days. If you set a goal of 30 pages, you could finish in one day. The tracker calculates estimated finish days as ceil(remaining_pages / daily_page_goal).
Tracking Progress
As you read, you update the current page. The tracker then shows remaining pages and estimated remaining time, which is proportional to the total estimated minutes. For "Kill Me if You Can!," the estimated reading time is 33 minutes. If you have read 15 of 30 pages, the remaining time would be about 33 × 15 / 30 = 16.5 minutes.
The progress history is stored in your browser's localStorage, so you can close the page and return later without losing your place. No account is needed. This makes it easy to track multiple books or to pause a reading session and resume the next day.
Using the Tracker With the Catalog
Because most titles are short, the Tracker is often a way to plan a single session. For a 30-page story, you might set a goal of 30 pages and finish in one sitting. For longer works like "The Old Ones" (21,075 words, about 85 pages), you might set a goal of 20 pages and spread it over several days.
The Tracker is also useful if you are reading multiple books at once. You can keep a separate progress record for each. The page-based approach works across any edition, as long as you know the total page count. If you switch from the default estimate to your own, the tracker adapts.