An American Childhood by Annie Dillard
Published 1987 · 65,000 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Journalism & Reportage, Memoir & Autobiography, Nonfiction
How hard is An American Childhood to read?
An American Childhood scores 21 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: 35 out of 100
- Rich, literary vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 38 out of 100
- Abstraction: 35 out of 100
- Concrete memories analyzed with philosophical depth.
- Information density: 42 out of 100
- Dense with observation and reflection.
- Narrative indirection: 18 out of 100
- Thematic rather than strictly chronological.
- Symbolic density: 22 out of 100
- Childhood objects as symbols of awakening consciousness.
- Ironic distance: 15 out of 100
- Adult perspective on childhood wonder.
- Resolution withholding: 15 out of 100
- Childhood ends without resolution.
- Structural complexity: 22 out of 100
- Three chronological sections with reflective passages.
How An American Childhood is regarded
An American Childhood holds a literary regard score of 47 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.