Argonauts of the Western Pacific by Bronisław Malinowski
Published 1922 · 154,275 words · about 10 hours at an average pace
How hard is Argonauts of the Western Pacific to read?
Argonauts of the Western Pacific scores 64 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 72 out of 100
- Heavy Trobriand terminology alongside formal academic English.
- Sentence structure: 75 out of 100
- Long, qualified, footnote-laden sentences.
- Abstraction: 70 out of 100
- Minute description constantly generalised into method.
- Information density: 85 out of 100
- Exhaustive; the point of the book is that nothing is left out.
How Argonauts of the Western Pacific is regarded
Argonauts of the Western Pacific holds a literary regard score of 87 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.