How Long Would It Take to Read the Most Treasured Classics of Our Time?

If the average person reads 250 words per minute, it would take about 1 hour to read a 12,000-word classic like “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain. Also, it would take 72 hours to read the entire Harry Potter series, which has a word count of 1,073,288 words.

Authors have thrilled us with astounding reads, and many of these have stood the test of time. They range from short coming-to-age reads to long 1 million+ word novels. They cover everything from nonfiction to fiction, from love stories to murder, and more.

Exactly how fast could you read some of the most treasured classics of all time? To figure it out, we calculated it for you!

Considering the average person reads 250 words per minute, the times below are how many hours it would take to read each book. Keep in mind that the word count for each book listed is based on the audiobook length. This is a rough estimate, but it will give you a good idea of how much time to set aside for each book. 

Title	Word Count	Hours
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain	12,000	1
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway	26,601	2
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll	28,710	2
Animal Farm by George Orwell	29,966	2
Candide by Voltaire	30,015	2
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl	30,644	2
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis	38,421	3
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho	38,871	3
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad	40,020	3
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman	40,600	3
The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis	43,333	3
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells	44,660	3
The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin	45,939	3
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane	47,180	3
The Trial by Franz Kafka	49,000	3
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald	49,155	3
Slaughterhouse – Five by Kurt Vonnegut	49,459	3
The Big Sur by Jack Kerouac	49,880	3
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut	51,185	3
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne	51,500	3
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf	52,250	4
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë	53,000	4
The Ocean at the End of the Lane	53,984	4
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf	57,565	4
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger	60,000	4
Lord of the Flies by William Golding	60,755	4
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley	63,766	5
The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett	65,113	5
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway	67,570	5
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston	70,957	5
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger	73,404	5
King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard	73,515	5
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner	76,995	5
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje	82,370	6
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton	83,774	6
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne	88,305	6
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood	90,240	6
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley	90,625	6
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell	92,655	6
Paradise Lost by John Milton	93,090	6
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster	96,135	6
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien	96,425	6
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift	97,730	7
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey	97,875	7
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen	99,760	7
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card	100,609	7
Catching Fire (The Hunger Games) Suzanne Collins	101,065	7
Beloved by Toni Morrison	104,835	7
The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen	105,248	7
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee	106,865	7
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck	114,157	8
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult	119,529	8
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia	122,380	8
Beartown by Fredrik Backman	129,168	9
The Odyssey by Homer	134,560	9
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier	135,285	9
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens	135,420	9
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson	138,098	9
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith	145,092	10
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens	155,960	10
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood	157,665	10
Dracula by Bram Stoker	160,363	11
The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher	164,000	11
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri	168,000	11
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman	168,640	11
White Teeth by Zadie Smith	169,389	11
Kafka on The Shore by Haruki Murakami	173,100	12
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens	173,130	12
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller	174,145	12
For Whom the Bell Tolls	174,106	12
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver	177,679	12
Little Women (Books 1 and 2) by Louisa May Alcott	183,833	12
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte	184,875	12
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck	185,745	12
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden	186,418	12
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo	187,775	13
Moby Dick by Herman Melville	189,950	13
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen	196,774	13
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky	206,000	14
Moby Dick by Herman Melville	206,052	14
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie	208,773	14
East of Eden by John Steinbeck	225,395	15
Ulysses by James Joyce	254,475	17
Cloudsplitter by Russel Banks	260,742	17
Middlemarch by George Eliot	268,395	18
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon	283,910	19
A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin	293,625	20
A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin	298,000	20
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand	311,596	21
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes	344,665	23
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy	348,000	23
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens	358,000	24
The Stand by Stephen King	415,715	28
A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin	424,000	28
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell	426,590	28
The Count of Mote Cristo by Alexandre Dumas	464,162	31
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo	530,982	36
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth	591,554	40
The Entire Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling	1,073,288	72
Swann’s Way: In Search of Lost Time Books by Marcel Proust	1,267,069	85

Final Thoughts

You’ll read the treasured classics above in the time stated if you reading speed is 250 words per minute. Just think how fast you could get through these books if you vastly increased your reading speed! Reading the entire Harry Potter series would be a snap! You can read your favorite classic faster than you thought you could!

Speed reading helps you to read well above the average 250 words per minute rate. With speed reading, you can read 400 – 700 words per minute without a drop in concentration. Many reading speedsters, using speed-reading techniques, even read at a speed of 1,000 words per minute (but with only 85% comprehension). If you learn speed reading, you can confidently finish Gone with the Wind quicker than the average reader.

Iris Reading is the largest and most trusted provider of speed-reading classes. Our lessons have been taught to thousands worldwide, including students in top-rated universities (like Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley) and executives at A-list organizations (like NASA, Google, etc.).

Iris Reading courses will help you read at superhuman speed while comprehending what you read and being able to recall it effectively. Thus, our speed-reading courses help you become a more efficient reader. Some of the top-rated speed reading courses are:

• Speed Reading Foundation Course. It’s the perfect course for beginners (whether students or professionals) who want to increase their reading speed so that they can read more in less time. 
• Speed Reading Mastery Course. It’s the ideal course for those who are already familiar with basic speed-reading techniques. You’ll learn how to comprehend when speeding through technical materials.  
• Speed Reading for Business Professionals. It’s the perfect course for professionals who need to get through tons of information despite having very busy schedules.

Start reaping the many benefits of speed reading. Register for a speed-reading course today.