The Boatbuilder by Daniel Gumbiner
Published 2018 · 155 pages · 60,000 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is The Boatbuilder to read?
The Boatbuilder scores 44 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. 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: 42 out of 100
- Craft and Vietnam-era vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Clear, thoughtful sentences.
- Abstraction: 50 out of 100
- Craft, war, and meaning.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- Boatbuilding detail.
- Narrative indirection: 45 out of 100
- Past emerges through present.
- Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
- The boat, craft carry weight.
- Ironic distance: 40 out of 100
- Persuasive writes with care.
- Resolution withholding: 45 out of 100
- Boat completed; questions remain.
- Structural complexity: 40 out of 100
- Linear with flashbacks.
How The Boatbuilder is regarded
The Boatbuilder holds a literary regard score of 48 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.