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How long does it take to read Beautiful Boy?

A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

David Sheff

Beautiful Boy by David Sheff takes about 6 hours 27 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 6 hours 27 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2007. 352 pages, about 96,800 words.

13 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 10 hours 45 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 6 hours 27 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 4 hours 2 minutes

The page count is the median across 20 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong? Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of David Sheff’s journey through his son Nic’s addiction to drugs and tentative steps toward recovery. Before Nic Sheff became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole, and lived on the streets. David Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs: the denial, the 3 A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? The police? The hospital?), the rehabs. His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself, and the obsessive worry and stress took a tremendous toll, but as a journalist, he instinctively researched every avenue of treatment that might save his son and refused to give up on him. Beautiful Boy is a fiercely candid memoir that brings immediacy to the emotional roller coaster of loving a child who seems beyond help

Subjects: Methamphetamine, Father-Child Relations, Drug abuse - Treatment - California, Drug abuse, Children of divorced parents, Amphetamine-Related Disorders

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