Cooked by Michael Pollan
Published 2013 · 475 pages · 110,000 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · Anthropology & Folklore, Nonfiction, Science & Nature, Travel & Food
How hard is Cooked to read?
Cooked scores 20 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: 30 out of 100
- Food science and microbiology terms. Well-explained.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- Abstraction: 30 out of 100
- Elemental framework organizing concrete experiences.
- Information density: 48 out of 100
- Food science, history, and personal narrative layered together.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- Four clear sections. Each follows an apprenticeship.
- Symbolic density: 18 out of 100
- Fire, water, air, earth as organizing metaphors.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Self-deprecating novice learning from masters.
- Resolution withholding: 80 out of 100
- Each section resolves with a completed dish.
- Structural complexity: 22 out of 100
- Four-part elemental structure. Clean and balanced.
How Cooked is regarded
Cooked holds a literary regard score of 45 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.