Find a Book
Search by subject, category, or length. Choose from options like Essays, American essays, or French essays, and filter by short to epic lengths. Find a book that fits your interests.
Do more with this book catalog
This catalog holds 94 public-domain works, organized into four categories: Historical Psychological Social Fiction, Adventure Picaresque Fiction, Fantasy Juvenile Worlds, and Science Fiction Utopias. Each category offers a distinct reading experience, from social commentary to imaginative worlds.
Use the tools below to find books by subject or length, compare works side by side, or estimate your reading time. The catalog includes essays, novels, and other texts, with a median length of about 60,000 words—roughly a 4- to 5-hour read.
94
books in this catalog
4
catalog categories
94
books with reading-time data
Made for this collection
Ways the catalog data becomes useful
Compare Books
Select two or more titles to view side-by-side details: word count, reading time, sections, and sentence complexity. See how works differ in structure and pacing.
Estimate Reading Time
Enter your reading speed to get a personalized estimate for any book. The catalog's median reading time is 262 minutes, but your pace will vary.
Choosing, Comparing, and Tracking: How the Three Tools Work Together
The FIOWI Public Domain Literature Library holds 94 books, with essay collections and other non-fiction works sitting alongside fiction. The catalog is organized into four categories, but the boundaries between them are not always obvious. A book like Essays, or discourses, vol. 2 (of 4) — Background and Themes appears under Fantasy Juvenile Worlds, a category that also contains fairy tales and children's stories. That placement reflects the catalog's practical grouping rather than a strict subject classification.
Three tools are available from this hub: Book Finder, Compare Books, and Reading Tracker. Each serves a different stage of reading: finding a candidate, weighing two or three options, and planning steady progress. The tools do not rate literary quality; they help you navigate the collection's measurable features, such as length, reading time, and text structure.
Start with Book Finder When You Have a General Interest
Book Finder narrows the 94 titles by criteria like category, word count, estimated reading time, chapter rhythm, and sentence flow. If you know you want a short essay collection, you can filter by the 'short' length bucket, which holds 21 books. Or if you prefer the steady cadence of a 19th-century essayist, you might set the subject to 'English essays -- 19th century' and see the four titles that match.
The finder also lets you indicate a preference for popular or hidden-gem books, though no-preference choices do not penalize any title. Once you have a shortlist, you may want to see how two candidates compare directly.
Use Compare Books to Clarify Trade-Offs
Compare Books takes two or three selected titles and lays out their word counts, estimated reading times, text sections, sentence flow, chapter rhythm, subjects, and page information. The comparison is descriptive, not evaluative. For instance, you might contrast a 50,000-word essay collection with a 180,000-word sermon volume. The difference in reading minutes is obvious, but the text sections also tell you how often you might pause.
This tool is especially useful when two books share a category or subject but differ in structure. A book with 40 short sections may suit a reader who likes frequent stopping points, while one with 5 longer sections may appeal to someone who prefers sustained immersion.
Track Your Progress with the Reading Tracker
Once you have chosen a book, the Reading Tracker helps you set a daily page goal and monitor your progress. It records pages, not minutes or sections, and it estimates finish dates based on your goal. For a book like Essays, or discourses, vol. 2 (of 4) — Background and Themes, which has 85,733 words and an estimated reading time of 373 minutes, the initial page estimate is ceil(85733 / 250), or 343 pages. If you read 20 pages a day, you can finish in about 18 days.
The tracker stores your history in the current browser, so no account is needed. You can also adjust the total page count to match your own edition, making the estimate more accurate for your copy.