Reading Sessions

Book Assembly has a reading timer right on each book page so you can capture how long you actually read for, not just where you ended up. Session data feeds your reading speed, your longest session, and the length distribution on the stats page.

Start, pause, stop, discard

Open a book you are currently reading and the timer sits under your progress bar. Start it when you sit down, pause it for a cuppa, resume when you come back, and stop it when you are done. Stopping opens a quick form asking for the page you reached (for audiobooks, your new listening time). The previous value is pre-filled so the common case is a one-tap confirm. Saving does two things: it advances your reading progress (your bookmark and the progress bar both move to the new page), and it records the session length so it counts toward your reading-speed and session-length stats. If you change your mind, the discard option throws the session away without logging anything or touching your progress.

Survives anything you throw at it

The timer keeps running across page navigation, refresh, and closing the browser entirely. If you forget about it for hours, you will see a gentle "Did you mean to stop this earlier?" prompt when you finally come back. You can adjust the recorded minutes before saving rather than logging a 14-hour session by mistake.

How did this session feel?

When you save a session, an optional one-tap mood pill lets you capture how the reading felt - Loved, Liked, Mixed, or Slow going. Skip it entirely if you like, or tap a selected mood again to clear it. The mood you picked shows up afterwards as a tooltip on the "Session" badge in that book's Progress History (hover or focus to see it). Session moods don't yet feed any of the Reading Stats charts - the Mood vs Rating card on the Stats page uses the book-level mood tags you set on a book's edit page, which are a different set of options ("dark", "funny", "hopeful", etc.). Session-mood charts are coming in a future update. The data is saved with every session, ready to go.

Log a past session

Forgot to run the timer? "Log a past session" opens a small form for backfilling: pick a date, enter the session length, the pages you read (or minutes you listened), and an optional mood. It records the session in your reading history without moving your current page or listening position - the session you did last week should not change where you are now.

One timer at a time

You can only have one timer running at once. If you open a different book while a timer is active, you will see a small "Timer running on another book" banner with a tap to jump straight to that book and stop or save it. When the active timer was last touched on another device, the banner names that device too ("on your iPad") so you know where to look.

Follows you between devices

The active timer is shared across every device signed into your account. Start a session on your laptop, pick it up on your phone a few minutes later, and the same elapsed time is there. Pause, resume, and stop from any device - the others reflect the change within about a second.

When you open a book whose timer was last touched on another device, the page shows an "Active on iPad · Safari" panel (or whichever device label) instead of the Start button. From there you can Take over (keeps the elapsed, re-anchors here) or Stop the other timer (clears it everywhere). If a timer has been running continuously for over three hours on another device, the panel reframes as "Did you mean to leave this running?" so a forgotten session doesn't quietly log a 12-hour read.

Your reading position follows you too

Update your current page on the laptop and the same value appears on your phone within about a second - no refresh needed. Works for audiobooks (listening time) just the same. The receiving device shows a small "Position updated from another device" notification so you know what changed, rate-limited to once every 30 seconds so a quick burst doesn't flood you with notifications.

If you happen to be updating progress yourself when another device writes a new value, your typed number stays put. A small note appears: "New value from another device: page 87 (tap to use)" - tap to swap, or submit your own to keep what you typed. Reading status, rating, and review changes sync the same way.

Stats that need session data

Once you have logged a few sessions, the Reading Stats page grows a new section with your reading speed (pages per hour over the last 30 days, with all-time as a sub-line when it differs noticeably), average session length, sessions per week, longest session ever, and a length-distribution histogram. Below the minimum-sample threshold the section says "Log a few more sessions" instead of showing misleading single-sample numbers.