Books by level / English books
Dialogues: reading level, length and free edition
Dialogues by Plato is a philosophy in English, in English translation. Our team rates it B2. It runs to 1,206,575 words with 21,213 different word forms, about 101–201 h of reading at 200 to 100 words per minute, and it is free from Standard Ebooks.
- Author
- Plato
- Language
- English
- Level
- B2
- Form
- philosophy
- Words
- 1,206,575
- Different word forms
- 21,213
- Forms for 95% / 98%
- 4,237 / 8,294
- Reading time
- 101–201 h
- Free edition
- Standard Ebooks
Is Dialogues right for your level?
To recognise 95% of the running words in Dialogues, you need its 4,237 most frequent word forms; for 98%, the share at which most readers manage a novel without a dictionary, 8,294. The median English B2 book in our table needs 3,747 forms for 95%, so by this measure the book is typical for its level: number 14 of 19, easiest first.
A word form is any spelling that appears in the text, so “walk” and “walked” count twice, and names count too. These numbers are a guide to how much vocabulary the book asks for, not a test. The level itself was set by hand by our team. Before you commit, read one page of the free edition and count the words you do not know: the one-page test takes two minutes.
Which words should you know before you start?
These are the words that Dialogues uses most often but that are not among the 2,000 most common word forms across all 309 English books in our library; the number is how many times each appears. Names of people and places are left out. Learning a handful of them first makes the opening chapters easier.
- pleasures 431
- legislator 370
- elements 361
- kinds 325
- injustice 325
- philosopher 319
- guardians 311
- temperance 309
- unjust 302
- poets 290
- desires 279
- dialogue 277
- harmony 276
- conception 274
- rhetoric 265
How does it begin?
The subject of the “Charmides” is Temperance or σωφροσύνη , a peculiarly Greek notion, which may also be rendered Moderation, 6 Modesty, Discretion, Wisdom, without completely exhausting by all these terms the various associations of the word.
From the Standard Ebooks edition, which is in the public domain. If this paragraph already feels slow, try a book one level lower.
How long does it take to read?
| Words | 100 wpm | 150 wpm | 200 wpm | 250 wpm |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,206,575 | 201 h | 134 h | 101 h | 80 h |
Learners reading a book at their level often manage 100 to 150 words per minute, and readers in their first language 200 to 250. Where these speeds come from, and a calculator for your own: How long does it take to read a book?
Where can you read it for free?
The free edition is from Standard Ebooks, a volunteer project that proofreads and typesets public-domain books. Standard Ebooks releases its editions into the public domain in the United States under CC0 1.0; you can download it as EPUB, Kindle (AZW3) or KEPUB without signing up.
To read it with a translation over every word you tap, open it in Readlang Mobile on iPhone or iPad.
What to read next at B2
English books at the same level that ask for a similar amount of vocabulary:
- Michael Faraday, His Life and Work, Silvanus P. Thompson: 88,927 words, 4,078 forms for 95%
- Stanford Stories: Tales of a Young University, Charles K. Field: 54,488 words, 4,022 forms for 95%
- The King in Yellow, Robert W. Chambers: 72,499 words, 4,477 forms for 95%
- The Art of War, Sun Tzu: 54,454 words, 3,770 forms for 95%
- Frankenstein, Mary Shelley: 78,010 words, 3,747 forms for 95%
- The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas: 463,374 words, 4,828 forms for 95%
See also all English books by level and books at B2 in all five languages.