The Dictionary of Lost Words
Pip Williams · 2021
How long does it take to read The Dictionary of Lost Words?
About 7 hours 22 minutes
368 pages at 50 pages an hour. 15 days at 30 minutes a day. Work out your own time.
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip and, learning that the word means “slave girl,” begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men. As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.
How long does it take to read The Dictionary of Lost Words?
The Dictionary of Lost Words is 368 pages, so it takes about 7 hours 22 minutes to read at an average pace of 50 pages an hour. A relaxed reader at 35 pages an hour needs about 10 hours 31 minutes; a fast reader at 70 pages an hour, about 5 hours 15 minutes.
How many days to read The Dictionary of Lost Words at 20 minutes a day?
About 23 days, reading 20 minutes a day at 50 pages an hour.
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