Books by level / Spanish books
Historia de la vida del Buscón: reading level, length and free edition
Historia de la vida del Buscón by Francisco de Quevedo is a novel in Spanish. Our team rates it C2. It runs to 42,981 words with 7,172 different word forms, about 3.5–7 h of reading at 200 to 100 words per minute, and it is free from Project Gutenberg.
- Author
- Francisco de Quevedo
- Language
- Spanish
- Level
- C2
- Form
- novel
- Words
- 42,981
- Different word forms
- 7,172
- Forms for 95% / 98%
- 5,023 / 6,313
- Reading time
- 3.5–7 h
- Free edition
- Project Gutenberg
Novela picaresca del Siglo de Oro narrada con prosa conceptista y mordaz.
Is Historia de la vida del Buscón right for your level?
To recognise 95% of the running words in Historia de la vida del Buscón, you need its 5,023 most frequent word forms; for 98%, the share at which most readers manage a novel without a dictionary, 6,313.
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 Historia de la vida del Buscón uses most often but that are not among the 2,000 most common word forms across all 36 Spanish 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.
- díjome 20
- licenciado 18
- llegamos 17
- comencé 16
- narices 15
- azotes 13
- olla 13
- ánimas 13
- ermitaño 13
- empecé 12
- hallé 12
- pude 12
- estudiantes 12
- lacayo 12
- tripas 11
How does it begin?
Title : Historia de la vida del Buscón, llamado Don Pablos, ejemplo de vagabundos y espejo de tacaños
From the Project Gutenberg 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 42,981 | 7 h | 5 h | 3.5 h | 3 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 Project Gutenberg eBook #32315. Project Gutenberg publishes books that are in the public domain in the United States, as EPUB, Kindle and plain text, free and without an account. Copyright terms differ by country: if you live outside the United States, check that the book is out of copyright where you are before you download it.
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 C2
Spanish books at the same level that ask for a similar amount of vocabulary:
- Don Quijote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes: 383,633 words, 7,929 forms for 95%
See also all Spanish books by level and books at C2 in all five languages.