There’s a website that exists that will tell you just how long it’ll take to read just about any book.
It’s called How long to Read This.
It works quite simply and is genius really. You enter the book you’re interested in into the homepage search bar. With over 12 million books listed; there’s a high chance your book will come up. Once you’ve found your book it will give you the average time it takes to read. To customize it; you simply hit the timer button and read the excerpt from that book. Based on how long it took to read that excerpt and the amount of words in said excerpt, it guestimates how long it will take to read it.
It’ll then use that time to guestimate your reading time for any other book; but you’re still able to retest using a excerpt from another specific book; because some books are harder and take longer to read than others.
You’d never think a website such as this needs to exist until you think of the numerous times this comes in handy. Like when you’re planning on taking books with you travelling. Wonder no more about how many to take, just work out How long to read any of your picks and only take for the free time you expect to have. Or when you visit someone for a weekend and they have a pile of books you want to dig into. Figure out what books you should start reading – those that’ll take quicker or those that will mean you don’t have to talk to anyone. It’s also a game you can play with someone. You each read the same book’s excerpt and see who’s the faster reader.
Bottom line, you won’t know how much you need it until you type in how long to read this and start playing. It’s book changing.
