How Long Does It Take to Read a Book?
You want a straight answer before you commit to a book, or you are sizing up whether that 900-page fantasy doorstop fits into your week. Here it is, up front: the average novel runs about 90,000 words, and at the average adult reading speed of 238 words per minute (Brysbaert, 2019), that takes roughly 6 hours and 18 minutes.
That single number will not fit every book, obviously. A slim classic like Animal Farm clears in about two hours. War and Peace takes a serious reader the better part of a work week. The table below breaks down more than 50 popular titles at four different reading speeds, so you can find your book (or something close to it) and get a real answer instead of a guess.
The question "how long does it take to read a book" almost never has one correct answer, because it is really two questions stacked together: how long is this specific book, and how fast do you personally read it. Most people searching this phrase are trying to solve for one of a handful of practical problems: deciding whether a book fits into a weekend, a flight, a work trip, or a reading challenge deadline; comparing two books before committing to one; or trying to figure out if an ambitious reading goal, say, 50 books in a year, is realistic given the actual page and word counts involved. This page is built to answer all three, with real numbers rather than a single rounded-off estimate that ignores how much books actually vary.
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The Quick Answer
For a typical 90,000-word novel:
- At 200 wpm (deliberate pace): 7 hours 30 minutes
- At 238 wpm (adult average, Brysbaert 2019): 6 hours 18 minutes
- At 300 wpm (fast, practiced reader): 5 hours
- At 450 wpm (trained RSVP pace): 3 hours 20 minutes
If you only remember one figure, remember this: reading speed and reading time move in opposite directions, and the gap between "average" and "trained" reading speed is worth roughly a third of your reading time back. That gap is exactly what an RSVP reader is built to close.
Not sure where you personally fall on that scale? Test your actual reading speed in about two minutes rather than assuming you're average. Most people are surprised in one direction or the other.
How We Calculate It
The math behind every number on this page is simple on purpose: words divided by your reading speed in words per minute equals minutes, and minutes converted to hours and minutes is your estimate. A 100,000-word book at 250 wpm is 100,000 / 250 = 400 minutes, which is 6 hours and 40 minutes. That is the entire formula. Nothing on this page hides more complicated math behind it.
The two variables worth understanding are the word count itself and the reading speed you plug in.
Word counts, not page counts, are the honest unit. Page counts are seductive because they are printed right on the book, but they are a bad proxy for how long a book takes to read. A single "page" can hold anywhere from 200 to 400 words depending on font size, trim size (a mass-market paperback packs far more onto a page than a large-format hardcover), line spacing, and how much white space the layout uses for dialogue-heavy fiction versus dense paragraphs of literary or academic prose. Two books both listed at "320 pages" can differ by 30,000 words or more. That is also why swapping formats, print, ebook, or a different edition, can make a book "feel" longer or shorter even though the actual word count barely changed. Every figure on this page is built from word counts, with page counts treated only as a rough cross-check, never the primary unit.
Reading speed is a range, not a fixed number. This page uses four reference speeds:
- 200 wpm - a careful, unhurried pace, common for dense or unfamiliar material
- 250 wpm - close to the adult average across fiction and non-fiction (Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies puts adults at 238 wpm for non-fiction and 260 wpm for fiction; see the full reading speed benchmarks for the complete breakdown by age and material type)
- 300 wpm - a strong, practiced reader working through familiar material
- 450 wpm - a realistic trained pace for RSVP (rapid serial visual presentation) reading, the technique behind tools like Read Fast's reader, where words are presented one at a time at a fixed point so your eyes stop making the small jumps and re-fixations that slow ordinary reading down
All word counts below are widely-cited, commonly reported estimates rounded to the nearest 1,000, gathered from publisher-reported figures and reading-length aggregators. They are approximate by nature: different editions, translations, and even different printings of the exact same book can vary by a few thousand words. Treat every number in this article as a solid estimate for planning your reading time, not a forensic word count.
Genre is worth flagging separately, because it explains a lot of the spread you will see in the tables below. Thrillers and commercial fiction are often written and edited toward a tighter word count, commonly 70,000 to 90,000 words, because pacing is part of the genre's appeal. Epic fantasy and doorstop literary fiction routinely run 150,000 to 300,000-plus words, since world-building and multiple viewpoint threads simply need more room. Nonfiction and self-help books cluster tighter still, usually 50,000 to 80,000 words, because most single-idea business or self-help books are built around one core argument stretched across a handful of chapters rather than a sprawling narrative. None of this is a rule, only a pattern, but it is a useful gut-check when a book's stated length seems surprising for its category.
One more distinction worth making up front: none of the numbers on this page apply to audiobooks. Narrators are typically directed toward a pace of roughly 150 to 160 words per minute so listeners can comfortably follow along without rewinding, which is noticeably slower than most adults' silent reading speed. A book you could read yourself in 6 hours at the 250 wpm reference speed might run 8 or more hours as narrated audio. If you are comparing a physical or ebook copy against an audiobook edition to decide which fits your week better, budget extra time for the audio version rather than assuming the two are interchangeable.
Reading Times for 50+ Popular Books
Fifty-three books, grouped into four categories so the table stays readable: classics, popular fiction and series openers, nonfiction and self-help, and a set of famously long and famously short outliers for scale.
Classics
| Book | Author | Approx. Words | 200 WPM | 250 WPM | 300 WPM | 450 WPM (RSVP) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | 47,000 | 3 h 55 m | 3 h 8 m | 2 h 37 m | 1 h 44 m |
| To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | 100,000 | 8 h 20 m | 6 h 40 m | 5 h 33 m | 3 h 42 m |
| Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen | 122,000 | 10 h 10 m | 8 h 8 m | 6 h 47 m | 4 h 31 m |
| The Catcher in the Rye | J.D. Salinger | 73,000 | 6 h 5 m | 4 h 52 m | 4 h 3 m | 2 h 42 m |
| Brave New World | Aldous Huxley | 64,000 | 5 h 20 m | 4 h 16 m | 3 h 33 m | 2 h 22 m |
| Fahrenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury | 46,000 | 3 h 50 m | 3 h 4 m | 2 h 33 m | 1 h 42 m |
| The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Mark Twain | 110,000 | 9 h 10 m | 7 h 20 m | 6 h 7 m | 4 h 4 m |
| Jane Eyre | Charlotte Bronte | 187,000 | 15 h 35 m | 12 h 28 m | 10 h 23 m | 6 h 56 m |
| Wuthering Heights | Emily Bronte | 107,000 | 8 h 55 m | 7 h 8 m | 5 h 57 m | 3 h 58 m |
| Moby-Dick | Herman Melville | 206,000 | 17 h 10 m | 13 h 44 m | 11 h 27 m | 7 h 38 m |
| Crime and Punishment | Fyodor Dostoevsky | 211,000 | 17 h 35 m | 14 h 4 m | 11 h 43 m | 7 h 49 m |
| Frankenstein | Mary Shelley | 75,000 | 6 h 15 m | 5 h 0 m | 4 h 10 m | 2 h 47 m |
| Dracula | Bram Stoker | 160,000 | 13 h 20 m | 10 h 40 m | 8 h 53 m | 5 h 56 m |
| The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde | 78,000 | 6 h 30 m | 5 h 12 m | 4 h 20 m | 2 h 53 m |
Notice the spread even within "classics." The Great Gatsby is short enough to finish in an evening at any of these speeds, while the big Russian and Gothic novels (Crime and Punishment, Moby-Dick, Dracula) demand real multi-session commitment no matter how fast you read.
Popular Fiction and Series
| Book | Author | Approx. Words | 200 WPM | 250 WPM | 300 WPM | 450 WPM (RSVP) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone | J.K. Rowling | 77,000 | 6 h 25 m | 5 h 8 m | 4 h 17 m | 2 h 51 m |
| Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows | J.K. Rowling | 198,000 | 16 h 30 m | 13 h 12 m | 11 h 0 m | 7 h 20 m |
| The Hobbit | J.R.R. Tolkien | 95,000 | 7 h 55 m | 6 h 20 m | 5 h 17 m | 3 h 31 m |
| The Fellowship of the Ring | J.R.R. Tolkien | 187,000 | 15 h 35 m | 12 h 28 m | 10 h 23 m | 6 h 56 m |
| A Game of Thrones | George R.R. Martin | 298,000 | 24 h 50 m | 19 h 52 m | 16 h 33 m | 11 h 2 m |
| The Da Vinci Code | Dan Brown | 138,000 | 11 h 30 m | 9 h 12 m | 7 h 40 m | 5 h 7 m |
| Gone Girl | Gillian Flynn | 120,000 | 10 h 0 m | 8 h 0 m | 6 h 40 m | 4 h 27 m |
| The Hunger Games | Suzanne Collins | 99,000 | 8 h 15 m | 6 h 36 m | 5 h 30 m | 3 h 40 m |
| Twilight | Stephenie Meyer | 119,000 | 9 h 55 m | 7 h 56 m | 6 h 37 m | 4 h 24 m |
| The Fault in Our Stars | John Green | 67,000 | 5 h 35 m | 4 h 28 m | 3 h 43 m | 2 h 29 m |
| It | Stephen King | 445,000 | 37 h 5 m | 29 h 40 m | 24 h 43 m | 16 h 29 m |
| The Shining | Stephen King | 160,000 | 13 h 20 m | 10 h 40 m | 8 h 53 m | 5 h 56 m |
| Dune | Frank Herbert | 188,000 | 15 h 40 m | 12 h 32 m | 10 h 27 m | 6 h 58 m |
| The Silent Patient | Alex Michaelides | 71,000 | 5 h 55 m | 4 h 44 m | 3 h 57 m | 2 h 38 m |
| Where the Crawdads Sing | Delia Owens | 100,000 | 8 h 20 m | 6 h 40 m | 5 h 33 m | 3 h 42 m |
| The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo | Stieg Larsson | 176,000 | 14 h 40 m | 11 h 44 m | 9 h 47 m | 6 h 31 m |
This is the category where genre matters most. Series openers written for young readers (Sorcerer's Stone, The Hunger Games, Twilight) tend to sit under 120,000 words, while epic fantasy and Stephen King's longer novels routinely double or triple that. If you are choosing your next read partly on time available, this table is the one to scan first.
Nonfiction and Self-Help
| Book | Author | Approx. Words | 200 WPM | 250 WPM | 300 WPM | 450 WPM (RSVP) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atomic Habits | James Clear | 80,000 | 6 h 40 m | 5 h 20 m | 4 h 27 m | 2 h 58 m |
| Sapiens | Yuval Noah Harari | 150,000 | 12 h 30 m | 10 h 0 m | 8 h 20 m | 5 h 33 m |
| The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People | Stephen Covey | 100,000 | 8 h 20 m | 6 h 40 m | 5 h 33 m | 3 h 42 m |
| How to Win Friends and Influence People | Dale Carnegie | 95,000 | 7 h 55 m | 6 h 20 m | 5 h 17 m | 3 h 31 m |
| Thinking, Fast and Slow | Daniel Kahneman | 165,000 | 13 h 45 m | 11 h 0 m | 9 h 10 m | 6 h 7 m |
| The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck | Mark Manson | 60,000 | 5 h 0 m | 4 h 0 m | 3 h 20 m | 2 h 13 m |
| Educated | Tara Westover | 130,000 | 10 h 50 m | 8 h 40 m | 7 h 13 m | 4 h 49 m |
| Rich Dad Poor Dad | Robert Kiyosaki | 55,000 | 4 h 35 m | 3 h 40 m | 3 h 3 m | 2 h 2 m |
| The Power of Now | Eckhart Tolle | 60,000 | 5 h 0 m | 4 h 0 m | 3 h 20 m | 2 h 13 m |
| Man's Search for Meaning | Viktor Frankl | 50,000 | 4 h 10 m | 3 h 20 m | 2 h 47 m | 1 h 51 m |
| Outliers | Malcolm Gladwell | 71,000 | 5 h 55 m | 4 h 44 m | 3 h 57 m | 2 h 38 m |
| Quiet | Susan Cain | 100,000 | 8 h 20 m | 6 h 40 m | 5 h 33 m | 3 h 42 m |
| Becoming | Michelle Obama | 140,000 | 11 h 40 m | 9 h 20 m | 7 h 47 m | 5 h 11 m |
| The Body Keeps the Score | Bessel van der Kolk | 130,000 | 10 h 50 m | 8 h 40 m | 7 h 13 m | 4 h 49 m |
Popular nonfiction and self-help titles cluster more tightly than fiction does, mostly landing between 50,000 and 165,000 words. Most of these are readable in a single dedicated afternoon at an average pace, or in an evening or two at a trained RSVP speed. That is part of why the genre sells the way it does: the time investment is genuinely lower than a comparable novel.
Long vs. Short: The Outliers
For scale, here are five of literature's longest novels next to four of its shortest.
| Book | Author | Approx. Words | 200 WPM | 250 WPM | 300 WPM | 450 WPM (RSVP) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Les Miserables | Victor Hugo | 655,000 | 54 h 35 m | 43 h 40 m | 36 h 23 m | 24 h 16 m |
| War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy | 561,000 | 46 h 45 m | 37 h 24 m | 31 h 10 m | 20 h 47 m |
| Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | 544,000 | 45 h 20 m | 36 h 16 m | 30 h 13 m | 20 h 9 m |
| Don Quixote | Miguel de Cervantes | 390,000 | 32 h 30 m | 26 h 0 m | 21 h 40 m | 14 h 27 m |
| Atlas Shrugged | Ayn Rand | 320,000 | 26 h 40 m | 21 h 20 m | 17 h 47 m | 11 h 51 m |
| Animal Farm | George Orwell | 30,000 | 2 h 30 m | 2 h 0 m | 1 h 40 m | 1 h 7 m |
| Of Mice and Men | John Steinbeck | 30,000 | 2 h 30 m | 2 h 0 m | 1 h 40 m | 1 h 7 m |
| A Christmas Carol | Charles Dickens | 28,000 | 2 h 20 m | 1 h 52 m | 1 h 33 m | 1 h 2 m |
| The Old Man and the Sea | Ernest Hemingway | 27,000 | 2 h 15 m | 1 h 48 m | 1 h 30 m | 1 h 0 m |
The gap here is enormous: Les Miserables at 655,000 words is roughly 24 times longer than The Old Man and the Sea. At average reading speed, that is the difference between a single lunch break and the better part of a work week. If a "big" book is intimidating you, this table is a useful reality check on just how relative "big" is.
How Long for a Book of Any Length
If your book is not in the tables above, use its word count (check the back cover, a retailer listing, or a quick search) against this reference table instead.
| Word Count | 200 WPM | 250 WPM | 300 WPM | 450 WPM (RSVP) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30,000 (novella / short nonfiction) | 2 h 30 m | 2 h 0 m | 1 h 40 m | 1 h 7 m |
| 50,000 (short novel) | 4 h 10 m | 3 h 20 m | 2 h 47 m | 1 h 51 m |
| 80,000 (typical nonfiction / self-help) | 6 h 40 m | 5 h 20 m | 4 h 27 m | 2 h 58 m |
| 100,000 (average novel) | 8 h 20 m | 6 h 40 m | 5 h 33 m | 3 h 42 m |
| 150,000 (long novel) | 12 h 30 m | 10 h 0 m | 8 h 20 m | 5 h 33 m |
| 200,000 (epic fantasy / doorstop) | 16 h 40 m | 13 h 20 m | 11 h 7 m | 7 h 24 m |
Don't know the exact word count of what you are holding? Paste the text itself, or just enter a rough count, into the reading time calculator and it will run this exact math against your own numbers instantly, no need to interpolate between rows.
A worked example makes the table easier to use on the fly. Say you are holding a 340-page paperback and want a quick estimate before committing to it. Multiply the page count by a middle-of-the-road 275 words per page: 340 times 275 is roughly 93,500 words, which rounds to the "100,000 (average novel)" row above. At 250 wpm that is about 6 hours 40 minutes; at a trained 450 wpm RSVP pace, closer to 3 hours 42 minutes. That is the entire method behind every figure on this page: an approximate word count, divided by a reading speed, rounded to something you can actually plan around.
How to Read Books Faster Without Losing the Plot
Every number above assumes a fixed reading speed, but reading speed itself is trainable, and the biggest single lever is eliminating the small, mostly unconscious habits that slow ordinary print reading down. Two matter most:
Regressions are the re-reading of words or phrases you already technically saw, usually out of a habit of double-checking rather than genuine confusion. Eye-tracking studies consistently show untrained readers regressing on 10 to 15 percent of the text they read, which is pure wasted time.
Subvocalization is silently "sounding out" words in your head as you read them, which caps your reading speed at roughly your internal speaking pace, even though your visual system can process words considerably faster than that.
RSVP (rapid serial visual presentation) reading targets both at once: it presents one word at a time at a fixed point on screen, so there is nothing to regress back to, and the forced pace makes subvocalization harder to sustain. That is the mechanism behind the jump from a 250 wpm average to a realistic 450 wpm trained pace used throughout this page. For the fuller research picture on what speed reading claims hold up and what does not, see our breakdown of speed reading. If you want a structured path from your current speed to a faster one, read-more and its read-more-books guide walk through building the habit book by book rather than trying to overhaul your reading speed in one sitting.
It is worth being honest about the ceiling here too. The 450 wpm figure used throughout this page is a realistic, comprehension-holding trained pace, not the 1,000-plus wpm sometimes claimed by speed-reading marketing. Research on eye movement and word recognition suggests comprehension starts dropping meaningfully once claimed speeds climb past roughly 500 wpm on unfamiliar material, because there is a physical limit to how quickly the eye can fixate on and process new information. The gain from average to trained RSVP reading, roughly cutting your reading time by a third, is real and achievable with practice. Claims of finishing a novel in under an hour with full comprehension generally are not.
Measure Your Real Speed
Every estimate on this page is built on reference speeds: 200, 250, 300, and 450 words per minute. Your actual reading speed might match one of those closely, or it might not, and that gap changes every single number above. Someone reading at 180 wpm will take noticeably longer on every book in these tables than someone at 320 wpm, and neither of them is "wrong," they are just different readers.
The only way to know where you actually fall is to test it directly. Run the reading speed test, which takes about two minutes and gives you a personal words-per-minute score instead of a borrowed average. Then apply that number to whatever you are about to read: paste the actual text into the reading time calculator for an instant, personalized estimate, or open the RSVP reader and start closing the gap between your current speed and a trained one.
Explore More
This page is part of Read Fast's reading speed and reading time resource set. For the full research behind the 238 wpm average and how reading speed varies by age and material, see the reading speed benchmarks. To calculate the reading time for any text you paste in yourself, use the reading time calculator. To find and measure your own baseline, start with the reading speed test.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to read a 300-page book?
A typical 300-page novel runs about 75,000 to 90,000 words, using the common estimate of 250 to 300 words per page. At the average adult reading speed of 238 words per minute, that works out to roughly 5 to 6.5 hours of reading. A faster reader at 300 wpm gets through it in 4 to 5 hours, and RSVP-trained reading at 450 wpm cuts that to under 3 hours.
How many words are in an average novel?
Most commercially published adult novels land between 70,000 and 100,000 words, with 90,000 commonly cited as a rough midpoint. Genre fiction varies a fair amount: thrillers and romance often run 70,000 to 90,000, epic fantasy regularly clears 150,000 to 300,000, and literary fiction can go either way. Nonfiction and self-help books tend to sit in the 50,000 to 80,000 word range.
Can you read a whole book in a day?
Yes, for most books under about 100,000 words, if you can dedicate several uninterrupted hours to it. At the average 238 wpm, a 90,000-word novel takes about 6.3 hours of actual reading time, which fits into a single day for a committed reader. Longer books (200,000+ words) or dense nonfiction make a one-day read much harder without either a faster pace or a very long sitting.
How long does it take the average person to read a book?
It depends entirely on the book's length, but for a typical 90,000-word novel at the average adult speed of 238 words per minute, expect about 6 to 6.5 hours of reading spread across however many sessions you use. Short books (Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men) take 2 to 2.5 hours. Long ones (War and Peace, Infinite Jest) take 40-plus hours.
Does listening to an audiobook count as reading, and is it faster?
Audiobooks deliver the same content but at a fixed narration pace, typically 150 to 160 words per minute, which is slower than most adults' silent reading speed of 238 to 260 wpm. So a book you could read yourself in 6 hours might take 8 or more hours as an audiobook. Whether it "counts" as reading is a separate debate, but it is not the faster option for most readers.
What reading speed do these estimates use, and does my own speed change the numbers?
The tables on this page show four reference speeds: 200 wpm (a careful, deliberate pace), 250 wpm (roughly the adult average), 300 wpm (a strong, practiced reader), and 450 wpm (a realistic trained RSVP pace). Your actual number could sit anywhere in or outside that range. Run the reading speed test linked below to find your real wpm, then use the per-word-count reference table to estimate any book from your own number.