How long does it take to read Birdie?
Tracey Lindberg
Birdie by Tracey Lindberg takes about 5 hours 17 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 17 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2015. 288 pages, about 79,200 words.
11 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours 48 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 17 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 18 minutes |
The page count is the median across 6 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Birdie is a darkly comic and moving first novel about the universal experience of recovering from wounds of the past, informed by the lore and knowledge of Cree traditions. Bernice Meetoos, a Cree woman, leaves her home in Northern Alberta following tragedy and travels to Gibsons, BC. She is on something of a vision quest, seeking to understand the messages from The Frugal Gourmet (one of the only television shows available on CBC North) that come to her in her dreams. She is also driven by the leftover teenaged desire to meet Pat Johns, who played Jesse on The Beachcombers, because he is, as she says, a working, healthy Indian man. Bernice heads for Molly’s Reach to find answers but they are not the ones she expected. With the arrival in Gibsons of her Auntie Val and her cousin Skinny Freda, Bernice finds the strength to face the past and draw the lessons from her dreams that she was never fully taught in life. Part road trip, dream quest and travelogue, the novel touches on the universality of women’s experience, regardless of culture or race. Monkey Beach meets Green Grass, Running Water meets The Beachcombers in this wise and funny novel by a debut Cree author.
Subjects: Fiction, humorous, general, Indians of north america, fiction, Cree women, Fiction, Self-realization in women, Cree Indians
