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How long does it take to read Addie Pray?

Joe David Brown

Addie Pray by Joe David Brown takes about 5 hours 44 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 5 hours 44 minutes

A weekend read

First published 1971. 313 pages, about 86,075 words.

12 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 9 hours 34 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 5 hours 44 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 3 hours 35 minutes

The page count is the median across 13 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

Addie Pray (1971) is a novel by Joe David Brown. It was the basis for the movie Paper Moon (1973) directed by Peter Bogdanovich. The novel was re-printed in 2002 as a paperback with the title Paper Moon: A Novel. The novel is narrated by Addie, an orphaned girl, who travels with confidence man "Long Boy" Moses Pray in the early 1930s, during the Great Depression. Their travels are mainly in the State of Alabama, but they do go elsewhere on occasion. The second half of the novel takes place in and around New Orleans, where Addie and Mose become involved in a scam with confidence man Colonel Culpepper. This portion of the tale would be omitted from the film Paper Moon. Addie states at the beginning of the novel that Long Boy may or may not be her father; she says that her late mother was the "wildest" girl in her town, and that Long Boy is one of her three possible fathers. The book features three scams not depicted in the movie, including bilking cotton dealers, investors in a worthless mine, and a wealthy lawyer in New Orleans.

Subjects: Depressions, Orphans, Father figures, Girls, Fiction, Swindlers and swindling

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