How long does it take to read The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book?
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book by J. R. R. Tolkien takes about 1 hour 10 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 1 hour 10 minutes
An evening's read
First published 1962. 64 pages, about 17,600 words. Written for children.
3 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 1 hour 57 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 1 hour 10 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 44 minutes |
The page count is the median across 17 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book is a collection of poetry written by J. R. R. Tolkien. A volume of songs, rhymes and poems, they tell of Tom's encounters with Goldberry, Old Man Willow, the Badger-folk, and with the ghostly Barrow-wight. Other poems in the book are an assortment of bestiary verse and fairy tale rhyme. Three of the poems appear in The Lord of the Rings, as well. The book is part of Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium and the Middle-earth canon. The book, like the first edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, is presented as if it is an actual translation from the Red Book of Westmarch, and contains some background information on the world of Middle-earth which is not found elsewhere: e.g. the name of the tower at Dol Amroth and the names of the Seven Rivers of Gondor. There is also some fictional 'background' information of those poems, linking them to the Hobbit folklore and literature as well as their actual writers (some of them were written by Samwise Gamgee). The volume includes what W. H. Auden considered Tolkien's best poem, The Sea-Bell, subtitled Frodos Dreme. It is a piece of great metrical and rhythmical complexity that recounts a journey to a strange land beyond the sea.
Subjects: Middle-earth, Poetry, Fiction, Fantasy, English Fantasy poetry, Children's poetry, English
