Stiff by Mary Roach
Published 2003 · 68,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Health & Medicine, Nonfiction, Satire & Humor, Science & Nature
How hard is Stiff to read?
Stiff 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
- Scientific and medical terms delivered with humor.
- Sentence structure: 22 out of 100
- Abstraction: 22 out of 100
- Concrete reporting on physical processes.
- Information density: 42 out of 100
- Packed with facts but digestibly entertaining.
- Narrative indirection: 80 out of 100
- Chapter-by-chapter topical exploration.
- Symbolic density: 100 out of 100
- The cadaver as object rather than symbol.
- Ironic distance: 22 out of 100
- Roach's signature deadpan humor about the macabre.
- Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
- Each chapter completes its topic.
- Structural complexity: 18 out of 100
- Twelve independent chapters. Simple structure.
How Stiff is regarded
Stiff holds a literary regard score of 42 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.