The 100 best moderately difficult books about faith and spirituality

On the Nature of Things by Lucretius, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens and Masnavi by Rumi lead the 100 best moderately difficult books about faith and spirituality, ranked by literary regard. To start, Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa is the most approachable of the highly regarded books here, about 4.2 hours to read.

Each point of light is one of the 100, placed by how hard it is to read. The brighter, the higher it ranks. The dotted line is one way up.

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No. 1 of 100

On the Nature of Things

Lucretius · c. 55 BCE

Difficulty 46/1005.5 hours

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About 847 hours for 100 of 100 books with measured lengths. Estimates use 250 words a minute, adjusted for each book's difficulty. At 2 hours a day, about 424 days for those books.

1–10 · 108 hours
  1. No. 1 on this list. On the Nature of Things

    Lucretius · c. 55 BCE

    Moderate5.5 hours

    Included in: Great Books of the Western World

    De Rerum Natura is one of the most significant surviving texts from antiquity, taught in classics, philosophy, and history of science programs at universities worldwide. It represents the fullest extant exposition of Epicurean atomism in any language and appears on virtually every list of essential classical works. Its rediscovery by Poggio Bracciolini in 1417 is credited with catalyzing Renaissance intellectual culture.

  2. No. 2 on this list. David Copperfield

    Charles Dickens · 1850

    Moderate24 hours

    Taught in schools: WJEC/Eduqas GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

    David Copperfield is firmly established in the Western literary canon as one of Dickens's supreme achievements and a defining example of the Victorian Bildungsroman. It remains widely taught, studied, and adapted across cultures.

  3. No. 3 on this list. Masnavi

    Rumi · 1273

    Challenging7.8 hours

    Included in: Bokklubben World Library, UNESCO Collection of Representative Works

    Rumi poured twenty-five thousand couplets of mystical poetry into a single work that uses merchant tales, animal fables, Quranic commentary, and bawdy jokes to dramatize the soul's journey toward divine love. The Masnavi became the foundational text of Sufi literary tradition and remains the most widely read poem in the Persian-speaking world.

  4. No. 4 on this list. Demons

    Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1872

    Challenging22 hours

    Included in: Bokklubben World Library

    A revolutionary cell takes hold of a provincial Russian town, manipulating liberal reformers and committing murder in the name of progress. Based partly on the Nechaev affair—a real case where a revolutionary leader murdered a skeptical member of his group—Dostoevsky creates a portrait of ideological possession that proved prophetic. Nikolai Stavrogin, beautiful and morally empty, inspires devotion he cannot reciprocate. Pyotr Verkhovensky, cunning and nihilistic, orchestrates chaos he believes will bring utopia. Around them swirl liberals, revolutionaries, idealists, and cynics whose ideas have disconnected from reality. The novel is Dostoevsky's darkest political vision: a society where borrowed Western ideas have corrupted Russian souls, where the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity. Also published as The Possessed or The Devils.

  5. No. 5 on this list. The Winter's Tale

    William Shakespeare · 1611

    Challenging1.9 hours

    Included in: Great Books of the Western World

    A standard text in university Shakespeare courses worldwide, The Winter's Tale is taught as part of the late romances alongside The Tempest and Pericles. While it ranks below the major tragedies in curriculum frequency, it is required reading in virtually all advanced Shakespeare courses and appears regularly in comparative drama syllabi globally.

  6. No. 6 on this list. Tartuffe

    Molière · 1669

    Moderate1.3 hours

    Taught in schools: Hungarian literature curriculum (magyar nyelv és irodalom) (Hungary)

    Included in: Great Books of the Western World

    Tartuffe is required reading in French literature, comparative literature, and theater history courses at virtually every major university. It is among the most-performed French plays internationally and appears on nearly all canonical drama reading lists alongside Racine and Corneille. The play has been in continuous repertoire since 1669 and is central to any study of Western comedy.

  7. No. 7 on this list. The Idiot

    Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1869

    Challenging19 hours

    Taught in schools: Russian FGOS literature standard

    Included in: Bokklubben World Library

    Prince Myshkin steps off a train into St. Petersburg after four years in a Swiss sanatorium, cured of his epilepsy but carrying no money, no connections, and a disposition so transparently good that everyone around him assumes he is simple. He is not simple. He sees directly into people — their vanity, their suffering, their better selves — and says so without calculation, which the society he enters reads as idiocy. Within days he is entangled with two women: Nastasya Filippovna, a celebrated beauty who has been kept and ruined by a wealthy patron and who tears through every room she enters, and Aglaya Epanchina, young and proud and surrounded by suitors. Both fall in love with him. He loves both. He cannot save either. Dostoevsky set out to portray a 'positively beautiful man' and then placed him in conditions designed to break such a man apart. The question the novel drives toward — whether goodness has any purchase on the world, whether beauty can save or only destroy — is never answered. What accumulates instead is a portrait of Russian society in the 1860s: the new money, the decayed gentry, the radical youths, the drawing rooms where everyone performs and no one is seen. Myshkin alone refuses to perform, which makes him simultaneously the novel's moral center and its most helpless figure. The final scene — two men sitting in darkness beside a dead woman — is among the most harrowing endings in 19th-century fiction.

  8. O'Neill dramatized his own family — the morphine-addicted mother, the alcoholic father, the doomed brother — with such lacerating honesty that he ordered the play sealed until twenty-five years after his death. The result is the most autobiographically raw masterpiece in American theater, a four-act cycle of blame and forgiveness that never grants its characters the relief of a resolution.

  9. O'Connor occupies the highest tier of 20th-century American short fiction, regularly anthologized alongside Hemingway, Faulkner, and Chekhov. 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find' appears in virtually every American literature survey. The Complete Stories (1971) won the National Book Award posthumously, cementing her stature. Her work defines Southern Gothic and theological fiction, studied in literature programs worldwide as essential American modernism.

  10. Wu Cheng'en sent a Buddhist monk and his three supernatural companions on a westward pilgrimage through eighty-one trials, creating the great picaresque of Chinese literature — a work that fuses slapstick comedy, Daoist and Buddhist allegory, and some of the most inventive monster-fights in world fiction. The Monkey King, Sun Wukong, became the most recognizable trickster figure in East Asian culture.

11–20 · 125 hours
  1. No. 11 on this list. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame · Victor Hugo · 1831

    Among Hugo most famous novels. Sparked Gothic Revival and cathedral preservation movement.

    Challenging16 hours

    Start this book
  2. No. 12 on this list. The Threepenny Opera · Bertolt Brecht · 1928

    Die Dreigroschenoper premiered in Berlin on August 28, 1928, and became one of the most performed plays of the 20th century, with productions on every inhabited continent. It is core curriculum in theatre studies, German literature, European modernism, and political theory courses worldwide. No syllabus data appears in the database, but the play's canonical standing is among the highest in 20th-century drama.

    Challenging2.1 hours

    Start this book
  3. No. 13 on this list. King James Bible · Anonymous

    The King James Bible is the most widely distributed text in Western civilization and the single most influential book in the English literary tradition. The Book of Job appears on virtually every humanities syllabus touching religion, philosophy, or literature, and has been central to theology, literary study, and philosophical discourse for two millennia. Milton, Blake, Keats, Tennyson, Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Toni Morrison have all engaged directly with Job; the 1611 KJV translation shaped English prose style for four centuries.

    Challenging66 hours

    Start this book
  4. No. 14 on this list. The Tempest · William Shakespeare · 1611

    Taught in schools: Pearson Edexcel GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK), UNAM Escuela Nacional Preparatoria – programas de Literatura (Mexico), WJEC/Eduqas GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

    Included in: Great Books of the Western World

    Prospero's island stages Shakespeare's final reckoning with his own art—the magician who conjures storms, manipulates lovers, and then drowns his book. Caliban's "Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises" is the most haunting speech given to a character the play calls a monster.

    Challenging2 hours

    Read now
  5. No. 15 on this list. The Wild Duck · Henrik Ibsen · 1884

    Taught in schools: Hungarian literature curriculum (magyar nyelv és irodalom) (Hungary)

    Included in: Great Books of the Western World

    The Wild Duck is a cornerstone of the Western dramatic canon, taught in virtually every university drama program and included in all standard collections of world theater. Though the database returns no syllabus count, Ibsen is the most taught non-English-language playwright in English-speaking universities, and this play—alongside Hedda Gabler and A Doll's House—appears on every major drama syllabus. It is consistently ranked among Ibsen's finest works and among the ten most important plays of the nineteenth century.

    Moderate2.2 hours

    Start this book
  6. No. 16 on this list. Water Margin · Shi Nai'an

    Included in: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade

    One of Four Great Classical Novels; foundational for martial arts genre.

    Moderate33 hours

    Start this book
  7. No. 17 on this list. Antigone · Sophocles · c. 441 BCE

    Taught in schools: Hungarian literature curriculum (magyar nyelv és irodalom) (Hungary), Lektury obowiązkowe – Polish national reading list (Poland), Montenegrin literature curriculum (crnogorski jezik i književnost) (Montenegro)

    Included in: Great Books of the Western World

    Sophocles gave a young woman one impossible choice — obey the state or bury her brother — and built from it the foundational argument about what happens when human law and moral law collide. Every subsequent debate about civil disobedience, from Thoreau to Martin Luther King, restates the question Antigone asked first.

    Moderate2.6 hours

    Read now
  8. No. 18 on this list. Boris Godunov · Alexander Pushkin · 1831

    Boris Godunov is a core text in Russian literature curricula worldwide and appears in Slavic literature and world drama courses at major universities. The play's Wikipedia article exists in over 50 languages, reflecting its global recognition. It is consistently anthologized alongside the foundational works of 19th-century European drama.

    Moderate1.1 hours

    Start this book
  9. No. 19 on this list. Songs of Innocence and of Experience · William Blake · 1794

    Taught in schools: AQA GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

    Blake etched, printed, and hand-colored each plate himself, fusing lyric poetry with visual art in a form no one had attempted before. The paired "Lamb" and "Tyger" compress an entire theology into forty-four lines: innocence asks who made you; experience asks how dare He.

    Challenging46 min

    Read now
  10. No. 20 on this list. The Hollow Men · T. S. Eliot · 1925

    One of Eliot's most famous poems, universally anthologized and quoted, central to the modernist canon.

    Challenging9 min

    Start this book
21–30 · 73 hours
  1. No. 21 on this list. Shakuntala · Kalidasa · 400

    Supreme Sanskrit drama; first Indian text to reach European audience.

    Moderate4.5 hours

    Start this book
  2. No. 22 on this list. The Pilgrims Progress · John Bunyan · 1857

    One of the most widely read books in the English language for over three centuries, second only to the Bible in many Protestant households. Standard reading in English literature courses worldwide, foundational text in studies of allegory, Puritan literature, and the English novel's origins. Available in over 200 languages, making it one of the most translated books in history.

    Moderate11 hours

    Start this book
  3. No. 23 on this list. Go Down, Moses · William Faulkner · 1942

    Go Down, Moses is recognized as central to American modernism and Southern gothic literature. It appears consistently in university curricula and major literary anthologies. While not achieving the absolute canonical singularity of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury or Absalom, Absalom!, it commands secure canonical standing within American letters.

    Challenging9.1 hours

    Start this book
  4. No. 24 on this list. Paradise Regained · John Milton · 1671

    Satan has fallen from Heaven, and Christ has been baptized in the Jordan. What comes next, in Milton's 1671 brief epic, is forty days in the wilderness and the most compressed philosophical argument in English verse. Satan does not simply offer bread and kingdoms. He offers Rome, with its full imperial apparatus; Athens, with its entire philosophical tradition from Socrates through Plato; and glory, defined in every form human ambition has devised. Christ refuses each in turn — not from weakness but from a clear-eyed account of what power, learning, and reputation are actually worth. The poem turns on a question Milton considered his career's central problem: what does true heroism look like, if it is not military conquest, political dominion, or classical education? His answer is patience, reason, and the rejection of everything Satan can plausibly offer. Written as a 'brief epic' in four books, Paradise Regained is spare where Paradise Lost is vast — no war in Heaven, no garden, no catastrophe. The drama is entirely verbal: two interlocutors debating the nature of kingship in a desert, one of them lying. The blank verse is the most concentrated Milton ever wrote. Each refusal Christ delivers is also a definition of the new heroism Milton believed the English Revolution had failed to produce.

    Moderate1.1 hours

    Read now
  5. No. 25 on this list. Murder in the Cathedral · T. S. Eliot · 1935

    A dramatization in free verse and with features derived from ancient and medieval theatre of the killing of Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury under King Henry II. Eliot used the device of a chorus, an ancient Greek invention, to express certain concerns and observations, and the killers take their turn to justify their action. When I read this play as a grammar school student in England, I was struck by the way the violence echoed the rise of fascism in Europe when the play was being written. My English master was somewhat mocking in class regarding my views, but later as a college student I read Eliot's own words confirming my experience.

    Challenging1.7 hours

    Start this book
  6. No. 26 on this list. The Iceman Cometh · Eugene O'Neill · 1946

    The Iceman Cometh appears in the Open Syllabus Top 500 Literature list and holds Library of America and NYRB Classics editions — markers of canonical permanence in American letters. It is taught in virtually every American drama survey and appears on most 'great American plays' lists alongside Long Day's Journey into Night. Wikipedia carries the play in only 5 languages, reflecting the global reach of drama (versus fiction) rather than lesser standing; within American literary culture, The Iceman Cometh is firmly canonical.

    Challenging5.5 hours

    Start this book
  7. No. 27 on this list. Brideshead Revisited · Evelyn Waugh · 1945

    The nostalgic masterpiece of English Catholicism. Charles Ryder's Oxford youth and his entanglement with the Marchmains became the definitive portrait of aristocratic decline. Core text in British literature courses.

    Moderate8 hours

    Start this book
  8. No. 28 on this list. Benito Cereno · Herman Melville · 1855

    One of the most taught American novellas, central to literary discussions of race, slavery, and narrative perspective.

    Moderate1.7 hours

    Start this book
  9. No. 29 on this list. Martin Chuzzlewit · Charles Dickens · 1844

    Martin Chuzzlewit holds a secure but second-tier position in the Dickens canon, taught regularly in Victorian literature courses and included on most serious Dickens reading lists, though it receives less classroom attention than Bleak House, Great Expectations, or David Copperfield. Dickens himself considered it his best work up to that point. The novel is available in numerous editions including Penguin Classics and Oxford World's Classics, and its key characters—Pecksniff, Sairey Gamp—remain cultural reference points.

    Challenging24 hours

    Read now
  10. No. 30 on this list. Life & Times of Michael K · J.M. Coetzee · 1983

    Taught in schools: UNAM Escuela Nacional Preparatoria – programas de Literatura (Mexico)

    Life and Times of Michael K won the Booker Prize in 1983 and stands as a foundational text in postcolonial literature. Its examination of apartheid South Africa, individual resistance, and the ethics of fiction has secured its place in literary canons alongside Coetzee's other major works. Frequently taught in universities and cited in critical literature.

    Challenging5.2 hours

    Start this book
31–40 · 50 hours
  1. No. 31 on this list. Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

    Ryūnosuke Akutagawa · 1915

  2. No. 32 on this list. Britannicus

    Jean Racine · 1669

  3. No. 33 on this list. The Mystery of Edwin Drood

    Charles Dickens · 1870

  4. No. 34 on this list. A Grain of Wheat

    Ngugi wa Thiong'o · 1967

    Included in: Heinemann African Writers Series

  5. No. 35 on this list. Salammbô

    Gustave Flaubert · 1862

  6. No. 36 on this list. Exile and the Kingdom

    Albert Camus · 1957

  7. No. 37 on this list. Villette

    Charlotte Brontë · 1853

  8. No. 38 on this list. Siddhartha

    Hermann Hesse · 1922

  9. No. 39 on this list. Rosmersholm

    Henrik Ibsen · 1886

  10. No. 40 on this list. Gitanjali

    Rabindranath Tagore · 1910

    Included in: UNESCO Collection of Representative Works

41–50 · 72 hours
  1. No. 41 on this list. Jerusalem Delivered

    Torquato Tasso · 1581

  2. No. 42 on this list. Gilead

    Marilynne Robinson · 2005

  3. No. 43 on this list. East of Eden

    John Steinbeck · 1952

  4. No. 44 on this list. Oedipus at Colonus

    Sophocles · c. 401 BCE

    Included in: Great Books of the Western World

  5. No. 45 on this list. Housekeeping

    Marilynne Robinson · 1980

  6. No. 46 on this list. Athalie

    Jean Racine · 1691

  7. No. 47 on this list. My Name Is Red

    Orhan Pamuk · 2003

  8. No. 48 on this list. The Power and the Glory

    Graham Greene · 1940

  9. No. 49 on this list. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

    Rainer Maria Rilke · 1910

  10. No. 50 on this list. Tala

    Gabriela Mistral · 1938

51–60 · 86 hours
  1. No. 51 on this list. Fasti

    Ovid · 8

  2. No. 52 on this list. Dune

    Frank Herbert · 1965

  3. No. 53 on this list. The Rainbow

    D.H. Lawrence · 1915

  4. No. 54 on this list. Mourning Becomes Electra

    Eugene O'Neill · 1931

    Included in: Great Books of the Western World

  5. No. 55 on this list. Brand

    Henrik Ibsen · 1866

  6. No. 56 on this list. Rabbit, Run

    John Updike · 1960

  7. No. 57 on this list. The House of Mirth

    Edith Wharton · 1905

  8. No. 58 on this list. Death Comes for the Archbishop

    Willa Cather · 1927

  9. No. 59 on this list. The Garden of Evening Mists

    Tan Twan Eng · 2013

  10. No. 60 on this list. Hawksmoor

    Peter Ackroyd · 1985

61–70 · 116 hours
  1. No. 61 on this list. Cat’s Cradle

    Kurt Vonnegut · 1963

  2. No. 62 on this list. Life of Pi

    Yann Martel · 2002

  3. No. 63 on this list. Gora

    Rabindranath Tagore · 1910

    Taught in schools: Turkish edebiyat curriculum (Turkey)

    Included in: UNESCO Collection of Representative Works

  4. No. 64 on this list. Cat's Cradle

    Kurt Vonnegut · 1963

  5. No. 65 on this list. The Birthday Party

    Harold Pinter · 1957

  6. No. 66 on this list. The Family Moskat

    Isaac Bashevis Singer · 1950

  7. No. 67 on this list. Parable of the Sower

    Octavia E. Butler · 1993

  8. No. 68 on this list. The War of the End of the World

    Mario Vargas Llosa · 1981

  9. No. 69 on this list. Henderson the Rain King

    Saul Bellow · 1959

  10. No. 70 on this list. Kristin Lavransdatter

    Sigrid Undset · 1922

71–80 · 80 hours
  1. No. 71 on this list. The Eye of the Storm

    Patrick White · 1973

  2. No. 72 on this list. Distant Star

    Roberto Bolaño · 1996

    Taught in schools: UNAM Escuela Nacional Preparatoria – programas de Literatura (Mexico)

  3. No. 73 on this list. The Tombs of Atuan

    Ursula K Le Guin · 1971

  4. No. 74 on this list. Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka

    Nikolai Gogol · 1832

  5. No. 75 on this list. All's Well That Ends Well

    William Shakespeare · 1605

    Included in: Great Books of the Western World

  6. No. 76 on this list. Victory

    Joseph Conrad · 1915

  7. No. 77 on this list. Only Yesterday

    Shmuel Yosef Agnon · 1945

  8. No. 78 on this list. The Heart of the Matter

    Graham Greene · 1948

  9. No. 79 on this list. The Plumed Serpent

    D.H. Lawrence · 1926

  10. No. 80 on this list. Ash-Wednesday

    T. S. Eliot · 1930

81–90 · 68 hours
  1. No. 81 on this list. The Assistant

    Bernard Malamud · 1957

  2. No. 82 on this list. Call It Sleep

    Henry Roth · 1934

  3. No. 83 on this list. The Satin Slipper

    Paul Claudel · 1929

  4. No. 84 on this list. Enemies, A Love Story

    Isaac Bashevis Singer · 1966

  5. No. 85 on this list. The Bridge of San Luis Rey

    Thornton Wilder · 1927

  6. No. 86 on this list. Demian

    Hermann Hesse · 1919

  7. No. 87 on this list. Thousand Cranes

    Yasunari Kawabata · 1949

    Included in: UNESCO Collection of Representative Works

  8. No. 88 on this list. The Marble Faun

    Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1860

  9. No. 89 on this list. Intruder in the Dust

    William Faulkner · 1948

  10. No. 90 on this list. A Mercy

    Toni Morrison · 2008

91–100 · 70 hours
  1. No. 91 on this list. The General of the Dead Army

    Ismail Kadare · 1963

  2. No. 92 on this list. The Crossing

    Cormac McCarthy · 1994

  3. No. 93 on this list. The Farthest Shore

    Ursula K Le Guin · 1972

  4. No. 94 on this list. The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

    Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1877

  5. No. 95 on this list. Angle of Repose

    Wallace Stegner · 1972

  6. No. 96 on this list. Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers

    Tom Wolfe · 1970

  7. No. 97 on this list. Mistero Buffo

    Dario Fo · 1969

  8. No. 98 on this list. Rites of Passage

    William Golding · 1980

  9. No. 99 on this list. The Abyss

    Marguerite Yourcenar · 1968

  10. No. 100 on this list. Franny and Zooey

    J.D. Salinger · 1961

About this list

These 100 books are the highest-scoring eligible moderately difficult books about faith and spirituality currently in the catalogue. About 847 hours of reading in all. Difficulty runs from 51 to 60 out of 100 for the middle half of the list; the summit is Songs of Innocence and of Experience at 64.

This list is ranked by literary regard, with a consistent order for equal scores. Membership follows authors and co-authors, not translators or editors. A book is here when ReadingRate files it under Faith & Spirituality as one of its primary reading domains, at a confidence of 0.8 or more. Catalogue coverage and the historical canon both limit what this list can represent.

When we matched the Canons dataset to our catalogue in October 2026, our canonical-status scores rose with the number of school curricula, publisher series and lists in it that cite a work: the median score was 72 for books one such source cites, 84 at two, 88 at three, 92 at four and 93 at five or more. Prizes are left out of that count. Outside the state curricula, the dataset’s sources choose mostly from what has been translated into English or French, so it is a weaker check on other literatures. Source: Canons (Andrew Piper), CC BY 4.0

Questions people actually ask

What are the best moderately difficult books about faith and spirituality?
By literary regard, which weighs canonical status, critical standing and influence: On the Nature of Things by Lucretius, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, Masnavi by Rumi, Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky and The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare. ReadingRate ranks 100 such books, each with a difficulty score and a reading-time estimate.
Which moderately difficult books about faith and spirituality should I read first?
Start from difficulty, not from rank. The most approachable books on this list that still carry top literary regard are Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (about 4.2 hours), Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and Water Margin by Shi Nai'an.
What are the shortest of the best moderately difficult books about faith and spirituality?
Among the top 25, the shortest are The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot (about 9 min), Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake (about 46 min) and Paradise Regained by John Milton (about 1.1 hours), at an average pace of 250 words a minute adjusted for each book's difficulty.
Which of the best moderately difficult books about faith and spirituality are the established classics?
By canonical status, how firmly a book sits in curricula, anthologies and the canon: King James Bible by Anonymous, Masnavi by Rumi, Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill, On the Nature of Things by Lucretius and David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.
Can I read any of these moderately difficult books about faith and spirituality for free?
23 of the 100 open in ReadingRate's reader with a free account, from public-domain editions: David Copperfield, Demons, The Winter's Tale, The Idiot, Journey to the West and 18 more.
How long would it take to read the top ten?
About 108 hours, at an average pace of 250 words a minute adjusted for each book's difficulty: 54 days at two hours a day. Set your own pace on the page and the list's reading times change to it.
How hard are moderately difficult books about faith and spirituality to read?
Most of this list sits between 51 and 60 on ReadingRate's 100-point difficulty scale, where 40 to 55 is moderate. The summit is Songs of Innocence and of Experience at 64. Every entry carries its own score, so a reader can pick a great book at a difficulty they will finish.
How is this list ranked?
On literary-regard data: how canonically established a work is, its critical standing, and its influence on later writing. It is not a readers’ poll, which is why recent bestsellers rarely appear. Membership follows authors and co-authors, not translators or editors. Lists by country, author, period, theme or difficulty keep to literature (fiction, poetry, drama and philosophy), their novels, poems and plays first and their philosophy after them; a list of a kind of book, such as memoir or criticism, keeps every book of that kind. Every list holds at most three works by one author. A book is here when ReadingRate files it under Faith & Spirituality as one of its primary reading domains, at a confidence of 0.8 or more.