If you’re trying to read more books, it’s helpful to know how long a book will take you — not how many days, but how much actual reading time.
The site Reading Length tells you how long it will take to read any particular book. Enter a title, and if it’s available on Amazon, Reading Length will find it. (Don’t hit enter too fast, or you might get the wrong result; instead wait for the drop-down menu to appear, and click that.)
First, Reading Length estimates the book’s word count, based on the length of the audiobook or (when there’s no audiobook) the page count. Then it divides that by the typical reading speed of 250 words per minute to give you your estimated reading time.
If you read faster or slower than 250 wpm, you can enter your personal reading speed and recalculate. To find your speed, you can take the site’s reading tests, which come in three levels (primary, high school, and university reading). You’ll probably find that you read each at a different speed. (I hit over 350 wpm on the high school-level Oscar Wilde, but under 250 on the university-level Dickens.)
One sad thing about this free resource is that if a lot of people use it at once, it can get overloaded and stop working, so you’ll have to check it again in a few hours.
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