84, Charing Cross Road
Published 1970 · 29,150 words · about 1 hour at an average pace · Memoir & Autobiography, Nonfiction
How hard is 84, Charing Cross Road to read?
84, Charing Cross Road scores 13 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 28 out of 100
- Hanff and Doel write plain, conversational English with occasional book titles and British idioms. It sits near Beach Read in accessibility, with a little more literary reference from the book titles.
- Sentence structure: 22 out of 100
- Letters use short, direct sentences, brisk and often joking. Hanff's clipped New York voice and Doel's polite formality are easy to follow.
- Abstraction: 22 out of 100
- Everything is concrete: orders, prices, parcels, daily life in two cities. Ideas about books appear only through specific titles and opinions.
- Information density: 20 out of 100
- Only about 29,000 words, with light, quick letters and few threads to track. It reads like The Diary of a Young Girl in its personal sparseness.
How 84, Charing Cross Road is regarded
84, Charing Cross Road holds a literary regard score of 45 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.