How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
Published 2018 · 140,000 words · about 9 hours at an average pace · Nonfiction, Psychology, Science & Nature
How hard is How to Change Your Mind to read?
How to Change Your Mind scores 28 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: 35 out of 100
- Neuroscience, pharmacology, and philosophical terminology explained clearly.
- Sentence structure: 32 out of 100
- Abstraction: 40 out of 100
- Neuroscience of consciousness and philosophical questions about the self.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- Dense with science, history, personal narrative, and philosophical reflection.
- Narrative indirection: 20 out of 100
- Moves between history, science, personal narrative, and philosophy.
- Symbolic density: 20 out of 100
- Ego dissolution and the default mode network serve as conceptual symbols.
- Ironic distance: 15 out of 100
- Pollan writes with the self-aware humor of a skeptical explorer.
- Resolution withholding: 15 out of 100
- The science is promising but incomplete. Pollan maintains appropriate uncertainty.
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- Sections on history, science, experience, and implications. Clear organization.
How How to Change Your Mind is regarded
How to Change Your Mind 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.