Where should a beginner start?

With Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, the easiest book on this list at difficulty 24 out of 100: about 3.3 hours at an average pace. Then Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (27) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (28).

What is the hardest book on the list?

Misery by Stephen King, at 43 out of 100 and about 7.2 hours at an average pace. It comes last, after the books that prepare for it.

How long does the whole list take?

About 57 hours at an average pace of 250 words a minute. The three longest books take 19 hours of them: Misery (7.2 hours), The Martian (6.2 hours) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (5.4 hours).

How is difficulty measured?

ReadingRate scores every book from 0 to 100 on how hard it is to read, from its prose and from what it asks of a reader. For a book of argument the score weighs how complex the argument is, what it assumes you already know, how opaque its terms are, how indirectly it makes its case and how much it tries to hold at once.

Books to get back into reading

Fifteen short, gripping books to bring the habit back, from the easiest to the hardest by ReadingRate’s difficulty score: from Girl with a Pearl Earring to Stephen King’s Misery.

15 books · 57 hours at an average pace · difficulty 24 to 43

Very easy

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier (1999): difficulty 24 of 100, Very easy, about 3.3 hours. A maid in Vermeer’s house and the painting that came out of it, in short, clear chapters.

Easy

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (2015): difficulty 27 of 100, Easy, about 2.9 hours. Four stories in one Tokyo café where you can go back in time, but only until your coffee cools.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (1892): difficulty 28 of 100, Easy, about 5.4 hours, free to read on ReadingRate. Twelve cases, each solved in under an hour, so you can stop after any one of them.
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton (1967): difficulty 29 of 100, Easy, about 2.6 hours. Two gangs of boys in 1960s Oklahoma, written while its author was still a teenager.
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937): difficulty 29 of 100, Easy, about 5 hours. A home-loving hobbit is talked into a journey with dwarves to a dragon’s hoard. The easiest way into Tolkien.
Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell (1991): difficulty 30 of 100, Easy, about 4.3 hours. An old couple murdered on a Swedish farm, and Kurt Wallander’s first case.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (1939): difficulty 35 of 100, Easy, about 2.8 hours. Ten strangers invited to an island die one at a time, and no one else is there.
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943): difficulty 35 of 100, Easy, about 1 hour. A pilot stranded in the desert meets a boy from a tiny planet. Written as much for adults as for children.
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915): difficulty 36 of 100, Easy, about 2.4 hours, free to read on ReadingRate. A man framed for murder runs across Scotland with spies behind him. The model for the chase thriller.
Stoner by John Edward Williams (1965): difficulty 37 of 100, Easy, about 4.9 hours. The quiet life of a farm boy who becomes a university teacher, told in plain, exact sentences.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843): difficulty 38 of 100, Easy, about 1.7 hours, free to read on ReadingRate. Three ghosts and one night that change a miser. Dickens at his shortest.
The Martian by Andy Weir (2011): difficulty 38 of 100, Easy, about 6.2 hours. An astronaut left behind on Mars solves his way through one problem after another, with jokes.

Moderate

Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf (2015): difficulty 40 of 100, Moderate, about 1.9 hours. Two widowed neighbours in their seventies agree to keep each other company at night. Haruf’s last novel.
Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín (2009): difficulty 41 of 100, Moderate, about 5.2 hours. A young Irish woman moves to 1950s New York and in the end must choose between two lives.
Misery by Stephen King (1987): difficulty 43 of 100, Moderate, about 7.2 hours. A novelist held captive by his most devoted reader, in one house, with nothing supernatural in it.

Questions

Where should a beginner start?: With Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, the easiest book on this list at difficulty 24 out of 100: about 3.3 hours at an average pace. Then Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (27) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (28).
What is the hardest book on the list?: Misery by Stephen King, at 43 out of 100 and about 7.2 hours at an average pace. It comes last, after the books that prepare for it.
How long does the whole list take?: About 57 hours at an average pace of 250 words a minute. The three longest books take 19 hours of them: Misery (7.2 hours), The Martian (6.2 hours) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (5.4 hours).
How is difficulty measured?: ReadingRate scores every book from 0 to 100 on how hard it is to read, from its prose and from what it asks of a reader. For a book of argument the score weighs how complex the argument is, what it assumes you already know, how opaque its terms are, how indirectly it makes its case and how much it tries to hold at once.

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