Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
Published 2013 · 384 pages · 40,000 words · about 3 hours at an average pace · Graphic Novel, Memoir & Autobiography, Nonfiction, Satire & Humor
How hard is Hyperbole and a Half to read?
Hyperbole and a Half scores 16 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: 18 out of 100
- Casual, conversational vocabulary. Deliberately plain.
- Sentence structure: 18 out of 100
- Abstraction: 18 out of 100
- Concrete stories and feelings. Abstraction through illustration.
- Information density: 30 out of 100
- Light text density. Illustrations carry significant meaning.
- Narrative indirection: 80 out of 100
- Direct storytelling. Each chapter is self-contained.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- The crude illustrations as emotional shorthand.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- Comedy of pain. Laughing at suffering to survive it.
- Resolution withholding: 12 out of 100
- The depression essays resist tidy resolution.
- Structural complexity: 12 out of 100
- Independent essays with illustrations. Very accessible.
How Hyperbole and a Half is regarded
Hyperbole and a Half holds a literary regard score of 34 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.