Belchamber by Howard Overing Sturgis
Published 1904 · 99,000 words · about 7 hours at an average pace
How hard is Belchamber to read?
Belchamber scores 55 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: 62 out of 100
- Formal Edwardian vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 68 out of 100
- Long, mannered late-Victorian sentences.
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- Concrete social life carrying a study of weakness.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Moderate period detail.
- Narrative indirection: 52 out of 100
- A third person close to a man who cannot assert himself.
- Symbolic density: 48 out of 100
- The title and the estate do quiet work.
- Ironic distance: 65 out of 100
- Steady, cool irony at Sainty's expense.
- Resolution withholding: 58 out of 100
- The ending offers no rescue.
- Structural complexity: 42 out of 100
- Linear.
How Belchamber is regarded
Belchamber 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.