Where I Lived, and What I Lived for by Henry David Thoreau
Published 2006 · 30,800 words · about 2 hours at an average pace
How hard is Where I Lived, and What I Lived for to read?
Where I Lived, and What I Lived for scores 62 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. 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: 72 out of 100
- Classical allusion and a deliberately elevated register.
- Sentence structure: 75 out of 100
- Long, balanced, aphoristic sentences built for quotation.
- Abstraction: 72 out of 100
- Practical detail constantly turning into moral abstraction.
- Information density: 65 out of 100
- Steady rather than heavy, though every sentence is worked.
How Where I Lived, and What I Lived for is regarded
Where I Lived, and What I Lived for holds a literary regard score of 88 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.