Not frequently. But when I needed a TOC, I just made my own.

Contest?

No but I have read table of contents of many books.

Lots of fiction with no table of contents. Plenty where chapters are just numbered or just end on one page and the next one starts on the next. No number. No chapter title.

Much less common in the non-fiction I read. Most will have chapter numbers and/or titles and most have a ToC, list of illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.

I mostly read books without tables. When they do have them, I don't use them at all. Some books don't even have chapters, or they're titled, not numbered. Why do you need chapters? Books have natural rhythms and break points. It's not obligatory to follow a table of contents and chapter layout... this is the beauty of art. There are few rules.

I'm concerned about your memory, OP. Even with inattentive ADHD and a busy parent schedule, I can navigate and orient myself in a book without tables or chapter designations.

I don’t generally look for them in my fiction books but I think they mostly don’t?

Nonfictional I mostly listen to on audio so I generally notice the table of contents only if I want to skip back to the beginning of a chapter but I feel like they generally have them.

Are the chapters themselves not marked? When you end one chapter, is there not a chapter title for the next?

Plenty of books with chapters don’t have a table of contents.

I’m not following why you need to track the chapter lengths. When I’m reading a super long book and have a daily goal to read a certain number of pages or chapters, I just use two bookmarks - one for where I am and one for the goal.

Obviously on a kindle, the chapters are marked and you can jump to them in the menu.

My new book does not have a table of contents. I am having a hard time keeping track of when the next chapter begins. Is it common not to have a table of contest? Does it bother you? I really thought all books had one.