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A reading goal tracker built around pace, not a bookshelf

Goal Setter · free · no signup

"24 books this year" is really a pacing target

Set a target like "24 books this year" and what you've actually set is a pacing problem: two books a month, one every couple of weeks, a rough number of pages a day if that's how you'd rather see it. Most people don't fail a reading goal because they can't read fast enough — they fail because nobody translated the yearly number into anything happening this week, so March arrives and they're four books behind without realising it.

To be upfront about what this is: it's a goal tracker, not a library or a place to log titles, ratings and reviews — Goodreads already does that well, and duplicating it isn't the point. What it does is take the goal itself, the number and the deadline, and break it into milestones and a weekly cadence, so "24 books" becomes a running pace you can check against reality every week instead of a shock in December.

If your target is pages rather than books, or a specific list rather than a count, the same structure works — phases, milestones, a timeline that shows whether you're ahead or behind. Just try it: put your reading target in and see the pace it needs, then check back in a month and see if reality agrees.

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Common questions

Does this track which books I've read?
No — it tracks the reading goal itself (the target and the pace), not a book log with titles or ratings. Pair it with a cataloguing app for that side; use this one for the goal and the weekly pace behind it.
How many books should I aim for?
Whatever's realistic against your actual reading time — the tool won't invent a number for you, but once you've picked one it turns it into milestones and a weekly pace so you can see early if you're falling behind.
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