How long does it take to read The Spectator Bird?
The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner takes about 3 hours 55 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 55 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1976. 214 pages, about 58,850 words.
8 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 6 hours 32 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 55 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 27 minutes |
The page count is the median across 11 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Joe Allston is a retired literary agent who is, in his own words, "just killing time until time gets around to killing me." His parents and his only son are long dead, leaving him with neither ancestors nor descendants, tradition nor ties. His job, trafficking the talent of others, had not been his choice. He passes through life as a spectator. A postcard from a friend causes Allston to return to the journals of a trip he had taken years before, a journey to his mother's birth-place where he'd sought a link with the past. The memories of that trip, both grotesque and poignant, move through layers of time and meaning, and reveal that Joe Allston isn't quite spectator enough.
Subjects: Fiction, Denmark in fiction, Americans in fiction, Americans, Danish Americans in fiction, Older men
