Alive by Piers Paul Read
Published 1974 · 85,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Journalism & Reportage, Literary Fiction, Nonfiction
How hard is Alive to read?
Alive scores 17 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: 22 out of 100
- Straightforward vocabulary. Accessible to all readers.
- Sentence structure: 22 out of 100
- Abstraction: 18 out of 100
- Concrete physical survival narrative.
- Information density: 42 out of 100
- Dense with detail about survival conditions.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- Chronological survival narrative.
- Symbolic density: 12 out of 100
- The mountain as indifferent adversary.
- Ironic distance: 80 out of 100
- Earnest, serious tone throughout.
- Resolution withholding: 15 out of 100
- Rescue uncertain until the final chapters.
- Structural complexity: 20 out of 100
- Chronological with many characters to track.
How Alive is regarded
Alive holds a literary regard score of 40 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.