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How long does it take to read Hungry Lightning?

Pei-Lin Yu

Hungry Lightning by Pei-Lin Yu takes about 4 hours 22 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 4 hours 22 minutes

A weekend read

First published 1997. 238 pages, about 65,450 words.

9 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 7 hours 16 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 4 hours 22 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 2 hours 44 minutes

The page count is the median across 1 edition, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

A young student of archaeology receives an offer she can't refuse, the chance to live among the Pume, a South American hunting-and-gathering people who call the tropical Venezuelan savannah home. During their time in the village of Doro Ana, the author and the principal researcher study a vanishing way of life in which cash money, the written word, automobiles, and airplanes are rare and frightening intrusions. Yu, adopted into a Pume family, provides an informal personal account of her two years' stay, describing the daily cycles of birth, growth, romance, sickness, healing, and death among the villagers. Yu's journal entries seek to present, through a young American's eyes, a sketch of her Pume family, their heroic struggle to survive in a changing world, and the power, humor, and mystery of the Pume way of life.

Subjects: Field work, Ethnology, Biography, Social life and customs, Yaruro Indians, Women anthropologists

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