About 21 minutes
How it feels to be colored me — Context and Discussion
Fantasy Juvenile Worlds
4,731 recorded words. Selected by the catalog's stored reading-time estimate.
View Gutenberg source #73549
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Start with a reading choice
Three of the shortest recorded reading commitments in this catalog. Times are estimates, not quality ratings.
About 27 minutes
Wilde v Whistler Being an Acrimonious Correspondence on Art Between Oscar Wilde and James A McNeill Whistler — Background and Themes
Fantasy Juvenile Worlds
6,061 recorded words. Selected by the catalog's stored reading-time estimate.
View Gutenberg source #69674About 33 minutes
Address of President Roosevelt at Chautauqua, New York, August 11, 1905 — Key Ideas to Explore
Science Fiction Utopias
7,570 recorded words. Selected by the catalog's stored reading-time estimate.
View Gutenberg source #68309Search the excerpts stored with this catalog
91 of 91 catalog books have a stored excerpt with a Gutenberg source record. Search covers these excerpts only, up to 6,000 characters per book. A missing match does not mean the phrase is absent from the full work.
Read a catalog excerpt example: Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass — Reading Notes
Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass My Escape from Slavery Reconstruction Douglass, Frederick. “My Escape from Slavery.” The Century Illustrated Magazine 23, n.s. 1 (Nov. 1881): 125-131. My Escape from Slavery In the first narrative of my experience in slavery, written nearly forty years ago, and in various writings since, I have given the public what I considered very good reasons for withholding the manner of my escape. In substance these reasons were, first, th…
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Compare two books and their available excerpts
| Book | Recorded words | Estimated minutes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| How it feels to be colored me — Context and Discussion | 4,731 | 21 | Gutenberg #73549 |
| Wilde v Whistler Being an Acrimonious Correspondence on Art Between Oscar Wilde and James A McNeill Whistler — Background and Themes | 6,061 | 27 | Gutenberg #69674 |
| Address of President Roosevelt at Chautauqua, New York, August 11, 1905 — Key Ideas to Explore | 7,570 | 33 | Gutenberg #68309 |
How these choices and excerpts are prepared
Choices use stored catalog measurements. Estimates vary with reading speed. A shared category is a catalog label, not a claim that two books have the same argument or literary quality.
Search reads excerpt text stored with this catalog and links to its associated Gutenberg record. The connection is stored in the site database; this tool does not recheck that every excerpt is word-for-word identical to that external record. Excerpt search does not cover every chapter and does not verify historical publication dates.
Catalog snapshot checked: 2026-09-25. Coverage: 91 public books, 91 available source excerpts.
Do more with this book catalog
This library brings together 91 public-domain works, organized into four broad categories. The tools on this page help you explore the collection on your own terms. You can search for books by subject or theme, compare different editions side by side, or get a realistic sense of how long a text will take to read. Each tool draws on the same catalog data, so the choices you make are consistent across the library.
Whether you are a casual reader or a careful researcher, these tools are designed to save time and make the catalog easier to navigate. The finder matches your interests to available titles, the comparison view lays out key facts about multiple books at once, and the reading estimator gives honest time ranges based on the actual length of each work. Start with any tool, and you will quickly see how the collection is put together.
91
books in this catalog
4
catalog categories
91
books with reading-time data
Made for this collection
Ways the catalog data becomes useful
Find Your Next Read
Narrow down 91 titles by subject, category, or length. Descriptions help you judge whether a book fits your interests before you open it.
Compare Books Side by Side
See word count, reading time, and subject coverage for several works at once. Useful for choosing between editions or planning a study session.
Estimate Reading Time
Get an honest estimate based on the actual word count of each text. Plan your reading schedule without surprises.
Choosing a Path Through the Collection
The NUQEW catalog holds 91 public-domain works, and the four categories split them into near-equal groups. With 24 titles in Historical Psychological Social Fiction and 23 in Adventure Picaresque Fiction, the shelves are balanced enough that the real differences appear in length, rhythm, and subject rather than in category alone. Book Finder, Compare Books, and Reading Tracker each answer a different question, and using them together keeps a search from stalling at the first promising title.
Consider a work like "My study windows — Text and Context" (id 302), a 141,750-word collection of essays and sketches that touches on Lincoln, Emerson, Thoreau, and even birds. Finder can surface it by subject or length, Compare can set it beside another essay collection to see how the reading time stacks up, and Tracker can turn that 617-minute estimate into a daily page plan. None of the tools judges quality; they simply make the practical dimensions visible.
When Finder and Compare Work Together
Finder narrows the field using criteria like category, word count, estimated reading time, chapter rhythm, sentence flow, and supplied subjects. It is the first stop when you know you want, say, a shorter work or something from a particular period. But narrowing to a handful of titles often leaves a final choice that depends on texture rather than type.
That is where Compare earns its place. Selecting two or three books side by side shows word count, estimated reading time, text sections, sentence flow, and chapter rhythm, all descriptive metrics relative to this catalog. For instance, comparing a 55,000-word essay collection with a 140,000-word one makes the commitment clear before you open the first page.
The two tools do not overlap exactly. Finder helps you build a shortlist; Compare helps you test that shortlist against your available time and preferred pacing. A book that looks ideal in a list may reveal itself as a marathon when placed next to a steadier alternative.
Turning a Choice into a Plan
Once a title is selected, Reading Tracker moves the question from "which book?" to "how will I finish it?" The tracker records progress in pages, not sections or minutes, so the first step is to know the total page count. For most titles, that total is estimated from the word count at 250 words per page, but you can replace it with the page count from your own reading app or edition.
The daily page goal defaults to 20 pages, and the tracker then estimates remaining time and finish days proportionally. If a book is estimated at 400 minutes and 200 pages, reading 20 pages a day suggests a ten-day plan. The math is simple, but it turns an abstract minute count into a concrete schedule.
Progress history lives in your browser's local storage, so no account is needed. That makes the tracker a private, low-friction companion to the public catalog. Start with Finder to locate a title, Compare to confirm the fit, and Tracker to pace the read.