Endurance by Alfred Lansing
Published 1959 · 100,000 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · History, Literary Fiction, Nonfiction
How hard is Endurance to read?
Endurance 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: 28 out of 100
- Nautical and Antarctic terminology. Otherwise clear prose.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- Abstraction: 15 out of 100
- Entirely concrete. Survival narrative.
- Information density: 48 out of 100
- Dense with geographical, nautical, and survival detail.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- Chronological narrative. Direct and transparent.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- Endurance (the ship and the quality) functions symbolically.
- Ironic distance: 100 out of 100
- Straightforward, admiring narrative.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- The crew survives. Incredible tension but known outcome.
- Structural complexity: 20 out of 100
- Chronological narrative in four parts.
How Endurance is regarded
Endurance holds a literary regard score of 48 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.