Where should a beginner start?

With Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, the easiest book on this list at difficulty 34 out of 100: about 1.7 hours at an average pace. Then One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (35) and The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (42).

What is the hardest book on the list?

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, at 71 out of 100 and about 26 hours at an average pace. It comes last, after the books that prepare for it.

How long does the whole list take?

About 132 hours at an average pace of 250 words a minute. The three longest books take 64 hours of them: Anna Karenina (26 hours), Moby-Dick (26 hours) and Jane Eyre (13 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.

Classics for beginners

Eighteen classics, from the easiest to the hardest by ReadingRate’s difficulty score: from Of Mice and Men, read in an evening, to Moby-Dick.

18 books · 132 hours at an average pace · difficulty 34 to 71

Easy

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (1937): difficulty 34 of 100, Easy, about 1.7 hours. Two ranch hands and their dream of a farm of their own. Short enough for one sitting.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1962): difficulty 35 of 100, Easy, about 3 hours. A single day in a Soviet labour camp, from reveille to lights out, told without self-pity.

Moderate

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1952): difficulty 42 of 100, Moderate, about 1.7 hours. An old fisherman, a giant marlin and three days at sea, in Hemingway’s plainest prose.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960): difficulty 42 of 100, Moderate, about 6.3 hours. A lawyer defends a Black man in 1930s Alabama, seen through the eyes of his young daughter.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy (1886): difficulty 43 of 100, Moderate, about 1.2 hours. A judge learns, while dying, that his correct and comfortable life was empty. Tolstoy in an evening.
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958): difficulty 45 of 100, Moderate, about 3.3 hours. A proud Igbo village leader faces the arrival of missionaries and colonial rule.
1984 by George Orwell (1949): difficulty 46 of 100, Moderate, about 6.5 hours. A clerk who rewrites history for the Party starts keeping a diary of his own.
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (1915): difficulty 47 of 100, Moderate, about 1.5 hours, free to read on ReadingRate. A travelling salesman wakes up as an insect, and his family must decide what to do with him.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861): difficulty 50 of 100, Moderate, about 12 hours, free to read on ReadingRate. A village orphan is raised into money by a secret benefactor. The most compact of Dickens’s long novels.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925): difficulty 52 of 100, Moderate, about 3.4 hours, free to read on ReadingRate. One summer of parties on Long Island, and the man who threw them for a single guest.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813): difficulty 52 of 100, Moderate, about 8.3 hours, free to read on ReadingRate. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy misjudge each other, and Austen’s irony does the rest.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847): difficulty 54 of 100, Moderate, about 13 hours, free to read on ReadingRate. An orphaned governess who will not be talked down to, and the secret in her employer’s house.

Challenging

Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945): difficulty 56 of 100, Challenging, about 2.4 hours. Farm animals overthrow their farmer and slowly become him. Short, but its allegory of the Russian Revolution puts it above 1984.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877): difficulty 56 of 100, Challenging, about 26 hours, free to read on ReadingRate. One marriage breaks apart in Moscow while another is built in the country. Long, but plainly told.
The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942): difficulty 64 of 100, Challenging, about 3 hours. A man kills a stranger on a beach and will not pretend to feel what he doesn’t. Simple sentences, hard questions.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818): difficulty 68 of 100, Challenging, about 8.8 hours, free to read on ReadingRate. A student makes a living man and abandons him, told through letters and confessions nested inside each other.
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1899): difficulty 69 of 100, Challenging, about 4 hours, free to read on ReadingRate. A steamboat journey up the Congo to find an ivory agent who has gone wrong. Short, but dense on every page.

Difficult

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851): difficulty 71 of 100, Difficult, about 26 hours, free to read on ReadingRate. The summit: a whale hunt that keeps stopping for science, sermons and philosophy. Read it last.

Questions

Where should a beginner start?: With Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, the easiest book on this list at difficulty 34 out of 100: about 1.7 hours at an average pace. Then One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (35) and The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (42).
What is the hardest book on the list?: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, at 71 out of 100 and about 26 hours at an average pace. It comes last, after the books that prepare for it.
How long does the whole list take?: About 132 hours at an average pace of 250 words a minute. The three longest books take 64 hours of them: Anna Karenina (26 hours), Moby-Dick (26 hours) and Jane Eyre (13 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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