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Cover of The Book of Speculation

How long does it take to read The Book of Speculation?

Erika Swyler

The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler takes about 6 hours 54 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 6 hours 54 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2015. 376 pages, about 103,400 words.

14 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 11 hours 29 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 6 hours 54 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 4 hours 19 minutes

The page count is the median across 12 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

"Simon Watson, a young librarian on the verge of losing his job, lives alone on the Long Island Sound in his family home--a house, perched on the edge of a bluff, that is slowly crumbling toward the sea. His parents are long dead, his mother having drowned in the water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, works for a traveling carnival reading tarot cards, and seldom calls. On a day in late June, Simon receives a mysterious package from an antiquarian bookseller. The book tells the story of Amos and Evangeline, doomed lovers who lived and worked in a traveling circus more than two hundred years ago. The paper crackles with age as Simon turns the yellowed pages filled with notes, sketches, and whimsical flourishes; and his best friend and fellow librarian, Alice, looks on in increasing alarm. Why does his grandmother's name, Verona Bonn, appear in this book? Why do so many women in his family drown on July 24? Could there possibly be some kind of curse on his family--and could Enola, who has suddenly turned up at home for the first time in six years, risk the same fate in just a few weeks? In order to save her--and perhaps himself--Simon must try urgently to decode his family history while moving on from the past. The Book of Speculation is Erika Swyler's gorgeous and moving debut, a wondrous novel about the power of books and family and magic"--

Subjects: Books and reading, Librarians, Fiction, Family secrets, Fiction, family life, Librarians, fiction

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