READING TIME · JOHN BUCHAN · 1915

How long does it take to read The Thirty-Nine Steps?

At an average reading speed, about 2 hours 35 minutes. The Thirty-Nine Steps is 40,892 words long, in 10 chapters.

WORDS: 40,892
CHAPTERS: 10
READING LEVEL: About grade 6 (Flesch–Kincaid)

Reading time at different speeds

Total reading time for The Thirty-Nine Steps at three reading speeds
Reader	Speed	Whole book
Unhurried	200 words a minute	3 h 25 min
Average adult reader	260 words a minute	2 h 35 min
Quick reader	320 words a minute	2 h 10 min

To finish it at a steady pace:

20 minutes a day: about 8 days
30 minutes a day: about 6 days
60 minutes a day: about 3 days

How many chapters are in The Thirty-Nine Steps?

The Thirty-Nine Steps has 10 chapters. The longest is Chapter 6 (6,152 words, 24 min); the shortest is Chapter 2 (2,506 words, 10 min). The average chapter takes 16 min.

Reading times below are at 260 words a minute.

Words and reading time for each chapter of The Thirty-Nine Steps
Chapter	Words	Reading time	Practice in Parlor
Chapter 1	4,648	18 min	Check it →
Chapter 2	2,506	10 min	Check it →
Chapter 3	4,611	18 min	Check it →
Chapter 4	4,346	17 min	Check it →
Chapter 5	3,532	14 min	Check it →
Chapter 6	6,152	24 min	Check it →
Chapter 7	4,149	16 min	Check it →
Chapter 8	2,933	11 min	Check it →
Chapter 9	2,574	10 min	Check it →
Chapter 10	5,441	21 min	Check it →

READING IT FOR CLASS?

Knowing how long it takes is one thing. Understanding it is another.

Parlor Study is a reading comprehension companion. Read The Thirty-Nine Steps one chapter at a time, then make sure you understood it.

Read a chapter. The full Project Gutenberg text, with highlights, notes and read-aloud.
Explain it in your own words. Challenge me asks about the main idea, what the text suggests without saying, and the turn the chapter hinges on, then checks your answer against the text.
Talk it through, then come back. Discuss stays within the chapters you have reached, so it won’t give away what comes next, and Revisit brings your ideas back later.

Open The Thirty-Nine Steps in Parlor →How Parlor practices reading comprehension

Parlor Study is a web preview for ages 13 and up, available by invitation. Request an invitation. AI feedback can make mistakes; check it against the text.

How these numbers were worked out

Words are counted in The Thirty-Nine Steps, Project Gutenberg eBook #558, the edition Parlor opens, divided into chapters exactly as Parlor shows them. Project Gutenberg’s licence and notes are left out. Other editions may differ slightly.

Reading speeds follow Marc Brysbaert’s review of 190 studies, which found that adults read English silently at about 260 words a minute for fiction and 238 for non-fiction (Journal of Memory and Language, 2019). Older and more difficult books often take longer than their word count suggests.

The reading level is the Flesch–Kincaid grade, worked out from average sentence length (15.6 words) and word length. It measures how long the sentences and words are, not how hard the ideas are.

Similar length

All reading times →