London and the Kingdom - Volume 2 vs Concrete Construction
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,006words between them — 4 min of it
London and the Kingdom - Volume 2 is longer — 190,433 words against 189,427 for Concrete Construction, a difference of 1,006 words or about 4 min of extra reading. London and the Kingdom - Volume 2 is the harder read, at grade 9.9 against 5.6.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| London and the Kingdom - Volume 2 | Concrete Construction | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Sharpe, Reginald R. (Reginald Robinson) | Gillette, Halbert Powers |
| Words | 190,433 | 189,427 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 12h 42m | 12h 38m |
| Unique words | 9,900 | 7,214 |
| Sentences | 9,279 | 16,469 |
| Average sentence length | 20.5 words | 11.5 words |
| Reading grade | 9.9 | 5.6 |
| Reading ease | 60.8 | 75.1 |
| Long words | 11.6% | 8.9% |
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 = |190,433 − 189,427| = 1,006 words 1,006 ÷ 250 wpm = 4 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, London and the Kingdom - Volume 2 or Concrete Construction?
London and the Kingdom - Volume 2 is longer — 190,433 words against 189,427 for Concrete Construction, a difference of 1,006 words or about 4 min of extra reading. London and the Kingdom - Volume 2 is the harder read, at grade 9.9 against 5.6.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 20990 and no. 24855 — 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.
