The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
Published 2022 · 560 pages · 140,000 words · about 16 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is The Book of Form and Emptiness to read?
The Book of Form and Emptiness scores 57 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 vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Ozeki's varied style.
- Abstraction: 60 out of 100
- Objects, grief, hoarding.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Libraries, Buddhism.
- Narrative indirection: 62 out of 100
- Book as narrator.
- Symbolic density: 62 out of 100
- Form, emptiness, voices.
- Ironic distance: 52 out of 100
- Compassionate narration.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Healing achieved.
- Structural complexity: 60 out of 100
- Multiple narrators.
How The Book of Form and Emptiness is regarded
The Book of Form and Emptiness holds a literary regard score of 54 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.