The Goose Man vs The Moonstone
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
441words between them — 2 min of it
The Goose Man is longer — 197,002 words against 196,561 for The Moonstone, a difference of 441 words or about 2 min of extra reading. The Goose Man is the harder read, at grade 7.7 against 7.2.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Goose Man | The Moonstone | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Wassermann, Jakob | Collins, Wilkie |
| Words | 197,002 | 196,561 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 13h 08m | 13h 06m |
| Unique words | 12,636 | 9,222 |
| Sentences | 10,750 | 11,522 |
| Average sentence length | 18.3 words | 17.1 words |
| Reading grade | 7.7 | 7.2 |
| Reading ease | 72.4 | 74.1 |
| Long words | 8.3% | 8.1% |
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 = |197,002 − 196,561| = 441 words 441 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Goose Man or The Moonstone?
The Goose Man is longer — 197,002 words against 196,561 for The Moonstone, a difference of 441 words or about 2 min of extra reading. The Goose Man is the harder read, at grade 7.7 against 7.2.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 25345 and no. 155 — 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.
