When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön
Published 1997 · 208 pages · 50,497 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Business & Self-Help, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality
How hard is When Things Fall Apart to read?
When Things Fall Apart scores 20 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: 25 out of 100
- Simple vocabulary. Buddhist terms explained.
- Sentence structure: 22 out of 100
- Abstraction: 38 out of 100
- Buddhist philosophical concepts made concrete through experience.
- Information density: 35 out of 100
- Moderate. Spacious, meditative pace.
- Narrative indirection: 12 out of 100
- Direct teaching with personal anecdotes.
- Symbolic density: 18 out of 100
- Groundlessness, falling apart as spiritual metaphors.
- Ironic distance: 80 out of 100
- Warm, sincere, occasionally humorous.
- Resolution withholding: 20 out of 100
- The point is to not resolve. Stay present.
- Structural complexity: 18 out of 100
- Short teaching chapters. Simple, accessible structure.
How When Things Fall Apart is regarded
When Things Fall Apart holds a literary regard score of 43 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.