Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
Published 2009 · 383 pages · 90,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Arts & Culture, Literary Fiction, Nonfiction, Science & Nature
How hard is Born to Run to read?
Born to Run scores 18 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: 25 out of 100
- Running and biology terms. Very accessible.
- Sentence structure: 25 out of 100
- Abstraction: 22 out of 100
- Concrete narrative with embedded science.
- Information density: 40 out of 100
- Dense with adventure, science, and running culture.
- Narrative indirection: 12 out of 100
- Multiple narrative threads converging on the race.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- The Tarahumara as symbol of natural human capacity.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Enthusiastic but self-deprecating about his own running.
- Resolution withholding: 80 out of 100
- The race provides dramatic climax.
- Structural complexity: 22 out of 100
- Multiple threads converging on a central event.
How Born to Run is regarded
Born to Run 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.