Turn a Reading List Into a Daily Page Count — Free
Reading lists fail quietly: the first week is comfortable, week three is impossible, and the last two texts are skimmed the night before. Splitting the list by your actual pages-per-hour turns the deadline into a daily number you can check in thirty seconds, and it shows which text has to be started early rather than late.
The proof surface
Free path: the card computes locally in the browser with no key and no account. Where an AI step helps, any free chat assistant works — Google AI Studio's free tier and Groq's free tier were both no-card and rate-limited when this page was reviewed on 2026-09-13 (limits change; check before you rely on them).
Why the flat version breaks
A list of texts with page counts is a total, not a plan. The plan needs three numbers the list does not have: how fast you read this material, how many days you actually have, and which text is the long one. All three are knowable in ten minutes.
How to build the sheet in four passes
Page counts differ by edition and by whether the notes are in the back. A count taken from a library copy that is not the one on your desk is a guess with a number attached.
Dense argument reads at half the speed of narrative. Four pages with a stopwatch gives you a real pace, and the schedule is built from that figure rather than from an average reader.
Not the days until the deadline. If you know you lose weekends to work, enter the honest figure — a plan built on days that do not exist is how the last text gets skimmed.
The sheet flags the text that carries the most hours. Reading it first is the difference between a plan that absorbs a missed evening and one that collapses in the final week.
SAMPLE DATA, NOT A VERIFIED CLAIM: AG210 · 206 pages · five texts · 18 pages an hour · 12 days · 96-page chapters start first. Replace these values with your own source before you rely on anything.
What breaks first
Using an aspirational reading pace
Forty pages an hour feels good and produces a plan that fails on day two. Use the number your stopwatch gave you, then revise it once you have read for a week.
Counting pages you will not read
Appendices, indexes and the seminar questions at the back are not reading load. If you will skim it, it belongs in the plan as a smaller number, not as full pages.
Scheduling to the deadline rather than to the days
Reading plans fail at the last text, not the first. Entering the real number of days front-loads the work, which is the whole point of running this before week one.
What you pay otherwise
| The usual route | What it leaves out | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Skimming the last text | Reading a whole book's worth in a night, and retaining none of it | the text, and the essay |
| A missed reading group | Turning up without the material, for the third week | the seminar mark |
| Buying a summary service | Notes on a text you would have read in six hours | a subscription for prose |
| This page + the free reading load sheet | Computed in your tab, result on screen before you type anything | $0 |
Try the free reading load sheet
Five texts are already plotted at 18 pages an hour over 12 days. Drop the pace to 12 and the daily figure and the bars change together.
Open the free reading load sheet →Keep the work if you will use it again
Every text, the hours at your pace, the daily page figure and the longest-bar flag, with no account.
Every text, the hours and the daily page figure stay free. The one-time tier adds the printable wall sheet plus the saved reading lists behind it.
Boundary: This schedules the pages you enter at the pace you measured. It does not know what your assessment requires or how your course weighs its texts — check the module handbook and confirm the reading you actually need.