| I should point out Project Gutenberg is only the source of most of the free ebooks. The reading level is calculated using the Flesch Reading Ease formula in Microsoft Word. I can't type the formula very clearly in plain text so check this link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-Kincaid_readability_test. It counts the average sentence length and average word length to form an estimate of text difficulty. It doesn't count total text length or any proper nouns or made up words which Word doesn't know the syllable count for. I guessed some of the results might cause some debate. I'm honestly not sure if the contentious results are more a product of flawed method by Flesch, or misconceptions about reading difficulty by well read, literate people. Having worked with some teenagers who were barely literate, it is interesting that what makes reading difficult for them is not necessarily the same as what good readers would find difficult. To be honest, at their reading level they simply wouldn't have even attempted any of these books as they would just see a wall of text and instantly give up, however a slightly better reader would still struggle when they reached an overly long, convoluted sentence (such as this one) or a single long, diffifult word. |
LOTR Characters by Quote
Celebrities by Audiobook
Books with Missing Letters
