The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson
Published 1990 · 80,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · History, Media & Technology, Nonfiction, Satire & Humor
How hard is The Mother Tongue to read?
The Mother Tongue scores 17 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
- Everyday vocabulary. Linguistic terms explained humorously.
- Sentence structure: 25 out of 100
- Abstraction: 22 out of 100
- Concrete examples and historical narrative throughout.
- Information density: 42 out of 100
- Dense with linguistic facts and historical anecdotes.
- Narrative indirection: 80 out of 100
- Direct, thematic exposition.
- Symbolic density: 80 out of 100
- Analytical and anecdotal. Minimal symbolism.
- Ironic distance: 18 out of 100
- Bryson's trademark gentle wit.
- Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
- Informational. No narrative tension to resolve.
- Structural complexity: 18 out of 100
- Thematic chapters. Simple, accessible structure.
How The Mother Tongue is regarded
The Mother Tongue holds a literary regard score of 39 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.