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How long does it take to read A History of Reading?

Alberto Manguel

A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel takes about 7 hours 11 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 7 hours 11 minutes

A weekend read

First published 1996. 392 pages, about 107,800 words.

15 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 11 hours 59 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 7 hours 11 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 4 hours 30 minutes

The page count is the median across 35 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader. Noted essayist Alberto Manguel moves from this essential moment to explore the 6000-year-old conversation between words and that magician without whom the book would be a lifeless object: the reader. Manguel lingers over reading as seduction, as rebellion, as obsession, and goes on to trace the never-before-told story of the reader's progress from clay tablet to scroll, codex to CD-ROM.

Subjects: History, Reading, Books and reading, Lezen, Boeken, Histoire

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