ReadingRate · What's new · 2025-12-31
See how often a book is taught at university
Book pages on ReadingRate show how many university syllabi a book appears on, counted by the Open Syllabus Project. The figure sits inside the panel explaining how that book's literary regard was scored, as one of the inputs to canonical standing — because a book set on six thousand reading lists is being taught, and that is a different fact from being popular. It is free and needs no account.
Available on web.
Star ratings measure enthusiasm and sales figures measure marketing. A syllabus count measures something narrower and more durable: whether people whose job is choosing texts keep choosing this one.
It is shown as a raw count with its source named, inside the disclosure that explains how the regard score was reached, rather than as a badge on the cover. A number nobody can trace back is not worth printing.
What it can't do
- About 785 books out of roughly six thousand in the catalogue carry a count. A missing count is not a low count.
- It is a snapshot rather than a live feed. The figures do not move as new syllabi are collected.
- Books were matched to the data on title alone, so two different works sharing a title can be conflated.
- Being widely taught is not a claim about quality, and the count reflects which universities and which languages the underlying dataset covers.
- Web only. The iOS app does not show it.
Questions people ask
- How many university courses teach this book?
- ReadingRate shows Open Syllabus Project counts of syllabus appearances on a book's page, under the explanation of its literary regard score. Around 785 books in the catalogue carry a figure.
- What is the Open Syllabus Project?
- A dataset of university reading lists, used to count how often a book is assigned. ReadingRate uses those counts as one input to a book's canonical standing.