How long does it take to read This Is Water?
This Is Water by David Foster Wallace takes about 2 hours 31 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 2 hours 31 minutes
An evening's read
First published 2009. 137 pages, about 37,675 words.
6 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 4 hours 11 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 2 hours 31 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 1 hour 34 minutes |
The page count is the median across 3 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in THIS IS WATER. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend.Writing with his one-of-a-kind blend of causal humor, exacting intellect, and practical philosophy, David Foster Wallace probes the challenges of daily living and offers advice that renews us with every reading.
Subjects: Conduct of life, Humanistic Education, Philosophy, Education, Humanistic, Nonfiction, Ethics
