How long does it take to read Cakes and Ale?
Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham takes about 4 hours 48 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 48 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1930. 262 pages, about 72,050 words.
10 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 48 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours |
The page count is the median across 36 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Cakes and Ale is a delicious satire of London literary society between the Wars. Social climber Alroy Kear is flattered when he is selected by Edward Driffield's wife to pen the official biography of her lionized novelist husband, and determined to write a bestseller. But then Kear discovers the great novelist's voluptuous muse (and unlikely first wife), Rosie. The lively, loving heroine once gave Driffield enough material to last a lifetime, but now her memory casts an embarrissing shadow over his career and respectable image.
Subjects: Fiction, Married people, Married people in fiction, Authors' spouses, Authors' spouses in fiction, Biographers
