Concrete Construction vs The Iliad
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
484words between them — 2 min of it
Concrete Construction is longer — 189,427 words against 188,943 for The Iliad, a difference of 484 words or about 2 min of extra reading. The Iliad is the harder read, at grade 10.4 against 5.6.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Concrete Construction | The Iliad | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Gillette, Halbert Powers | Homer |
| Words | 189,427 | 188,943 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 12h 38m | 12h 36m |
| Unique words | 7,214 | 13,144 |
| Sentences | 16,469 | 7,279 |
| Average sentence length | 11.5 words | 26 words |
| Reading grade | 5.6 | 10.4 |
| Reading ease | 75.1 | 66.9 |
| Long words | 8.9% | 6.4% |
Highlighted cells are the larger figure — except reading ease, where higher means easier.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions, same counting rule·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How this is worked out
- Both texts are counted the same way, from the same source, with Gutenberg's header and licence footer struck first.
- The gap is stated in words and then in time at 250 words a minute — the rate is printed because a duration without one cannot be checked.
- Difficulty is compared on Flesch–Kincaid grade, which reads sentence and word length only. It cannot see irony or dialect, so treat it as a measure of surface, not of effort.
gap = |189,427 − 188,943| = 484 words 484 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Concrete Construction or The Iliad?
Concrete Construction is longer — 189,427 words against 188,943 for The Iliad, a difference of 484 words or about 2 min of extra reading. The Iliad is the harder read, at grade 10.4 against 5.6.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 24855 and no. 6130 — and from no other source. Neither book’s text is set on this site.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·US public domain·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Word counts and reading levels are computed from a specific public-domain edition and will differ from other editions and from other counting methods — see the method page.
