I've tried every reading app. Goodreads is too social. Storygraph comes close but doesn't track the way I think about books. So I built my own.

What it does

A simple static site (also built with 11ty) that:

  • Logs books I've read with a date and short note
  • Shows a yearly reading count
  • Generates a simple chart of reading pace over time
  • Has zero JavaScript on the frontend — it's just HTML and CSS

Why I built it

The main reason: I wanted the data to be mine, in a format I control. A markdown file per book. No accounts, no sync, no subscriptions.

Tech

Built with 11ty, a few Nunjucks templates, and vanilla CSS. Data lives in a books.js data file — one object per book. The chart is SVG generated at build time.

Took about a weekend. Works exactly as intended.