Tenth of December by George Saunders

Published 2013 · 279 pages · 55,545 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Short Fiction

How hard is Tenth of December to read?

Tenth of December scores 56 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. 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: 52 out of 100
Contemporary vernacular.
Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
Saunders's inventive style.
Abstraction: 60 out of 100
Compassion, capitalism.
Information density: 52 out of 100
Various settings.
Narrative indirection: 58 out of 100
Interior monologue.
Symbolic density: 58 out of 100
Varied symbols.
Ironic distance: 60 out of 100
Satirical sympathy.
Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
Stories end variously.
Structural complexity: 55 out of 100
Story collection.

How Tenth of December is regarded

Tenth of December holds a literary regard score of 75 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.

About the author

George Saunders