The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
Published 2010 · 320 pages · 70,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Anthropology & Folklore, Media & Technology, Nonfiction, Science & Nature
How hard is The Shallows to read?
The Shallows scores 27 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: 30 out of 100
- Neuroscience and media theory terminology.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- Abstraction: 35 out of 100
- Neuroscience concepts grounded in personal experience.
- Information density: 48 out of 100
- Dense with neuroscience, history, and argument.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- Thesis-driven with historical chapters.
- Symbolic density: 12 out of 100
- The shallows as metaphor for diminished cognition.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Self-aware about the irony of writing a book about not being able to read books.
- Resolution withholding: 15 out of 100
- The problem is ongoing. No technological fix offered.
- Structural complexity: 22 out of 100
- Historical chapters building to neuroscience argument.
How The Shallows is regarded
The Shallows holds a literary regard score of 45 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.