The Outermost House by Henry Beston
Published 1928 · 50,000 words · about 3 hours at an average pace · Nonfiction, Science & Nature
How hard is The Outermost House to read?
The Outermost House scores 22 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: 38 out of 100
- Elevated, literary prose. Naturalist vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 42 out of 100
- Abstraction: 30 out of 100
- Concrete observation with philosophical undertones.
- Information density: 42 out of 100
- Rich with naturalist observation and atmospheric detail.
- Narrative indirection: 15 out of 100
- Seasonal chronological structure. Direct observation.
- Symbolic density: 30 out of 100
- The beach, the house, and the sea function as symbols of the relationship between humans and nature.
- Ironic distance: 100 out of 100
- Reverent, sincere tone throughout.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- The year ends. The cycle of seasons provides natural closure.
- Structural complexity: 20 out of 100
- Ten chapters following the seasons. Simple, effective structure.
How The Outermost House is regarded
The Outermost House holds a literary regard score of 55 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.