One Day in December by Josie Silver
Published 2018 · 528 pages · 90,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Romance
How hard is One Day in December to read?
One Day in December scores 14 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: 15 out of 100
- Everyday British English. Conversational.
- Sentence structure: 15 out of 100
- Abstraction: 12 out of 100
- Concrete romantic scenarios. No abstraction.
- Information density: 25 out of 100
- Light. Character dynamics carry the narrative.
- Narrative indirection: 12 out of 100
- Chronological year-by-year structure. Clear desires, delayed fulfillment.
- Symbolic density: 100 out of 100
- December as annual checkpoint. The bus as missed connection.
- Ironic distance: 100 out of 100
- Warm, self-aware humor. No cynicism.
- Resolution withholding: 18 out of 100
- Ten years of near-misses before resolution.
- Structural complexity: 15 out of 100
- Ten December chapters. Simple, effective structure.
How One Day in December is regarded
One Day in December holds a literary regard score of 20 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.