Be Here Now by Ram Dass
Published 1971 · 27,500 words · about 2 hours at an average pace
How hard is Be Here Now to read?
Be Here Now scores 52 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. 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: 40 out of 100
- Simple English with a layer of Sanskrit and yogic terms.
- Sentence structure: 35 out of 100
- Fragmentary, hand-lettered, often only a few words a page.
- Abstraction: 78 out of 100
- Almost entirely about states of consciousness, with very little concrete anchoring.
- Information density: 42 out of 100
- Light per page, though the middle section is a dense manual.
How Be Here Now is regarded
Be Here Now holds a literary regard score of 59 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.