The Shrine

In short, it is a method which gives a point score based on an equation measuring the number of syllables per word, and the number of words per sentence. The shorter the sentences and the more low syllable words used, the better the score. Originally it was used as a scale to determine the reading level of a text, but now it’s used as more of a marker for how smooth a text is to read.

Does it make a book better? Help success?

I found it interesting when taking some texts and analyzing them against calculators. I first intended to do a few books, but I started analyzing dozens.

99-103
Ernest Hemingway and Dauphne Du Maurier.
Hemingway doesn’t surprise me, as there is an editing tool called Hemingway which focuses on highlighting and scoring paragraphs based on ease of reading.

The next batch was surprising.
94-98
JRR Tolkien, GRR Martin, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and Toni Morrison.
All among the most highly praised authors of all time. But these authors are not known for ease of read, but by the scale they are.

Next down: 88-93
JK Rowling, James Joyce, John Milton, Agatha Christie, and Robert Jordan

80-87
Robert Louis Stevenson, CS Lewis, the Bible, Lewis Carol, Bret Easton Ellis, the Bronte sisters, and Virginia Woolf

70-79
Isaac Asimov, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Mary Shelley, Herman Melville, and Jonathan Swift.
The interesting thing about this group is that they’re perhaps the best plotters on my list, and they all write around the same level in terms of the Flesch scale.

In the 40 to 69 range
Jane Austen, Jules Verne, Charles Dickens, Thomas Malthus, and Edward Gibbon
interesting considering they are all from the late 18th to mid 19th century. Writers from before this time and after tend to score higher. Malthus’s Essay on the Principles Of Population scores the lowest at 42.



Personally speaking, I like books from all across the spectrum. While this scale says something about readability, many find Tolkien and Shakespeare to be difficult. Actual difficulty to process texts, might come from other factors; such as the density of ideas. Tolkien has a reputation for being a slow read, but this is a bit misleading as there’s a lot going on in his words; he uses a high vocabulary range compared to most authors, he also has a tendency to pack a high density of information into his texts (e.g. the balrog fight is this huge epic thing in the minds of most who read it, but it’s only a couple of paragraphs) - and that can take a bit to process - Add that his books have a high character count, and the characters have many nicknames and epithets (e.g. Master Took, Pip, Pippin, Peregrin); Aragorn has 20 names and epithets. Though these are things not properly considered on the Flesch calculation for ease of reading.

Although, if ease of reading is what comes natural to people with mastery over the use of language, then it may say something. Shakespeare, Tolkien, and Hemingway are often hailed as masters in this field. Other authors (Asimov, Orwell, Huxley), who scored lower are hailed as masters of plotting, form, and ideas. I haven’t read Martin or Du Maurier in a very long time - so I can’t say anything. Twain, no comment.

It's interesting where Cormac McCarthy falls on the lists. I'd be more interested in seeing where his individual books lie on the scale. While in general his books are rather straightforward and lack flowery language and long sentences, some of his books are as dense and difficult to understand as Shakespere or Tolkien.

You could definitely put a bunch of his books in front of a fifth grader (one with a history of reading at least) and expect him to get a grasp of the story, though. It's one of my favorite parts of his writing that so much is on the surface.