Reading the whole Harry Potter series takes about 70 hours at an average pace for fiction. That’s a little under three full days without sleep, or about seven months at 20 minutes a day. Philosopher’s Stone alone takes about 5 hours. The Lord of the Rings needs about 31 hours, War and Peace about 38, and The Great Gatsby a single long evening.

Below are reading times for 22 well-known books, from The Little Prince to Proust, each with the number of days it would take at 20 minutes a day. That second column is the one that tells you whether a brick is a winter project or a summer one.

How we worked it out

The sum is simple: words ÷ reading speed. For speed we used 260 words per minute, the average for silent reading of fiction in a 2019 meta-analysis of reading rate that pooled 190 studies. Word counts are the commonly cited figures for each book, rounded. Editions and translations differ, so treat every number as a good estimate rather than a stopwatch reading.

Curious how long a typical book is in pages? We checked 53 prize-winning novels in how many pages is a book. These are hours of reading, not hours of your life. Breaks, rereading and the occasional nap with the book on your face are extra.

Reading times for 22 famous books

Book Words (approx.) Reading time Days at 20 min a day
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 17,000 1 h 5 min 4
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens 29,000 1 h 50 min 6
Animal Farm, George Orwell 30,000 1 h 55 min 6
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald 47,000 3 h 10
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J. K. Rowling 77,000 4 h 55 min 15
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell 89,000 5 h 40 min 18
The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien 95,000 6 h 5 min 19
The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins 100,000 6 h 25 min 20
Twilight, Stephenie Meyer 119,000 7 h 40 min 23
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen 122,000 7 h 50 min 24
Dune, Frank Herbert 188,000 12 h 5 min 37
Moby-Dick, Herman Melville 206,000 13 h 15 min 40
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky (English translation) 212,000 13 h 35 min 41
Ulysses, James Joyce 265,000 17 h 52
A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin 293,000 18 h 45 min 57
It, Stephen King 445,000 28 h 30 min 86
The Lord of the Rings (all three volumes), J. R. R. Tolkien 481,000 30 h 50 min 93
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace 544,000 34 h 50 min 105
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy (English translation) 587,000 37 h 40 min 113
The Bible (King James Version) 783,000 50 h 10 min 151
Harry Potter, the complete series 1,084,000 69 h 30 min 209
In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust (French original) 1,267,000 81 h 15 min 244

A few honest caveats. Ulysses will not go at 260 words per minute for anyone; plan double. The Bible and Proust are not usually read straight through at novel speed either. And the days column assumes you read every single day, which nobody does, so think of it as a lower bound.

How long does it take to read each Harry Potter book?

The series grows with its readers. The first book is a weekend; the fifth is a small holiday.

Book Words (approx.) Reading time
Philosopher’s Stone 77,000 4 h 55 min
Chamber of Secrets 85,000 5 h 25 min
Prisoner of Azkaban 107,000 6 h 50 min
Goblet of Fire 191,000 12 h 15 min
Order of the Phoenix 257,000 16 h 30 min
Half-Blood Prince 169,000 10 h 50 min
Deathly Hallows 198,000 12 h 40 min

If you plan a rereading marathon, the jump at Goblet of Fire is where most people slow down. Budget for it, and the series is very doable over a winter.

Why other lists say it takes less time

You may have seen infographics that put The Lord of the Rings at around 26 hours. Many of those date back to 2014 and assume everybody reads at 300 words per minute. The 2019 meta-analysis found that the old 300 figure overestimates how fast adults actually read. With a realistic average, every number goes up by roughly 15 percent.

That’s good news, not bad: if a book takes you longer than an infographic promised, you aren’t slow. The infographic was optimistic.

How to read a long book without running out of steam

A 500,000-word book isn’t harder than five 100,000-word books. It just gives you fewer finish lines. A few things that help:

  • Set a small daily target, in minutes or pages, instead of thinking about the whole thing. Twenty minutes a day finishes The Lord of the Rings in about three months.
  • Make your own milestones. Parts, volumes or every 100 pages. Ticking them off keeps the middle from feeling endless.
  • Read it with someone. A buddy read with a shared schedule is one of the best ways to get through a brick, and you get someone to talk to about the ending.
  • Keep a lighter book on the side. Reading several books at once is fine. A short novel between two volumes of fantasy can stop a slump before it starts.
  • Let audio carry the slow parts. Switching to the audiobook for a few chapters is still reading the book.

Your book, your pace

The numbers above use an average reader. For your own book, check the page count and look it up in our table of how long it takes to read 100 pages, or put it into the reading time calculator together with how many minutes a day you have. Want to know your real pace first? Test your reading speed in a couple of minutes.

Got only an evening? Start with short books you can read in one sitting.

Talemi keeps the running total for you. Log your page each day and the app shows your progress, your daily goal and how far the last page still is, and you can turn a brick into a reading challenge with friends. See how Talemi works or join early access.

FAQ

How long does it take to read the whole Harry Potter series? About 70 hours of reading time at an average fiction pace of 260 words per minute. At 20 minutes a day, that’s about seven months; at an hour a day, a little over two months.

How long does it take to read The Lord of the Rings? About 31 hours for all three volumes, or roughly 10 hours per book. At 20 minutes a day, it takes about three months.

How long does it take to read War and Peace? About 38 hours in English translation. Its chapters are short, so one chapter a day is a popular slow-read schedule: it takes about a year and only a few minutes a day.

How long does it take to read The Great Gatsby? About 3 hours. It’s one of the shortest novels on most school reading lists and works well in one long sitting.

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