Find Your Next Read
Tell the Finder what you care about—subjects, length, or pace—and it will point to books that fit. The catalog is small enough to browse, but the Finder narrows the field quickly.
Do more with this book catalog
The ASGOA Public Domain Literature Library holds 96 open-license books, arranged into four themed shelves: Adventure Picaresque Fiction, Fantasy Juvenile Worlds, Science Fiction Utopias, and Historical Psychological Social Fiction. Each category contains 24 works, so browsing by shelf is a reliable way to find a starting point.
Beyond the usual catalog search, this library offers three reader tools. The Finder helps you match books to your interests. The Compare tool lets you look at two books side by side, using factual details such as length and text structure. The Reading tool estimates how long a book will take, based on its word count.
96
books in this catalog
4
catalog categories
96
books with reading-time data
Made for this collection
Ways the catalog data becomes useful
Compare Books Side by Side
Look at two titles together. Check word counts, reading times, sentence complexity, and how the text is structured. This helps you decide which book matches your current mood.
Estimate Reading Time
See how long a book might take. The median book here is about 54,000 words, roughly four hours of steady reading. Short reads are under 20,000 words; epics exceed 150,000.
Choosing a Book in This Library
The ASGOA Public Domain Literature Library holds ninety-six books, and nearly all of them reward a slow reading. The three tools on this page—Book Finder, Compare Books, and Reading Tracker—are meant to be used together, not one after the other. Each answers a different question: Finder narrows the field, Compare tests two or three titles side by side, and Tracker turns a choice into a sustainable plan.
A concrete example: the catalog's median book runs about 54,000 words, which at a typical pace takes roughly 237 minutes. But that median hides real variation. A title like "The Last Fight of the Revenge — Key Ideas to Explore" (id 296) is under 15,000 words, while several regimental histories exceed 200,000. Knowing where a book sits in that range changes how you approach it.
Start with Finder, but not alone
Book Finder is the natural entry point because it lets you sort by category, length, reading time, chapter rhythm, sentence flow, subjects, and a popularity/hidden-gem preference. With four categories of twenty-four books each, and a fairly even split across length and time buckets, no single filter will point to a unique title. The tool's value is in combining two or three criteria—say, a short book in the Adventure category with a quick reading time.
The finder also lets you leave criteria open. No-preference choices do not penalize books, so you can start broad and narrow gradually. For instance, you might begin with all books, then filter by subject "Great Britain. Army -- History" (four titles), then add a length preference. The catalog's subject options are sparse—only eight are listed here—so they work best as a final refinement rather than a first pass.
Compare to see trade-offs
Once you have two or three candidates, Compare Books lays out word count, estimated reading time, text sections, sentence flow, chapter rhythm, subjects, and page information when available. The point is not to declare one book better but to see what each demands of you. A book with many text sections may feel more broken-up, even if its word count is moderate.
For example, "The Last Fight of the Revenge — Key Ideas to Explore" has 11 text sections and a relatively high average sentence length of 33 words, while a manual like "Marine bayonet training — Inside the Classic" (id 307) has 13 sections and a much shorter average sentence length of 16.5. That difference in sentence flow can change how closely you need to read.
Use Tracker to commit
After a book is chosen, Reading Tracker turns the abstract idea of 'reading more' into a daily page goal. The tracker records progress in pages, not minutes or sections, so you need to know your edition's page count. The tool estimates it as word count divided by 250 words per page, but you can replace that with the total from your reading app or printed edition.
For a book like "The Last Fight of the Revenge — Key Ideas to Explore," the default estimate would be about 58 pages. At a goal of 20 pages a day, that is roughly three days. For a longer work, the same goal stretches into weeks. Seeing that arithmetic in advance helps you decide whether a book fits your schedule.
When to move between tools
The three tools are iterative. You might start in Finder, move to Compare for two finalists, then begin Tracker. But you can also go backward: if Tracker reveals that a book's estimated finish date is too distant, return to Finder and adjust your filters. The catalog's categories are not literary genres in the usual sense—Adventure Picaresque Fiction includes military histories, and Fantasy Juvenile Worlds includes manuals on swords and bayonets. Use the tools to find what you can finish, not what fits a label.