Homer's Odyssey vs The Elements of Bacteriological Technique
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
3words between them — 0 min of it
Homer's Odyssey is longer — 122,805 words against 122,802 for The Elements of Bacteriological Technique, a difference of 3 words or about 0 min of extra reading. Homer's Odyssey is the harder read, at grade 10.8 against 7.7.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Homer's Odyssey | The Elements of Bacteriological Technique | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Snider, Denton Jaques | Eyre, J. W. H. (John William Henry) |
| Words | 122,805 | 122,802 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 8h 11m | 8h 11m |
| Unique words | 8,606 | 7,718 |
| Sentences | 5,181 | 12,419 |
| Average sentence length | 23.7 words | 9.9 words |
| Reading grade | 10.8 | 7.7 |
| Reading ease | 60.1 | 57.4 |
| Long words | 11.2% | 17.8% |
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 = |122,805 − 122,802| = 3 words 3 ÷ 250 wpm = 0 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Homer's Odyssey or The Elements of Bacteriological Technique?
Homer's Odyssey is longer — 122,805 words against 122,802 for The Elements of Bacteriological Technique, a difference of 3 words or about 0 min of extra reading. Homer's Odyssey is the harder read, at grade 10.8 against 7.7.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 26275 and no. 27713 — 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.
