Books by level / English books
The End of the World: reading level, length and free edition
The End of the World by Geoffrey Dennis is a non-fiction in English. Our team rates it C1. It runs to 39,220 words with 7,226 different word forms, about 3.5–6.5 h of reading at 200 to 100 words per minute, and it is free from Standard Ebooks.
- Author
- Geoffrey Dennis
- Language
- English
- Level
- C1
- Form
- non-fiction
- Words
- 39,220
- Different word forms
- 7,226
- Forms for 95% / 98%
- 5,265 / 6,442
- Reading time
- 3.5–6.5 h
- Free edition
- Standard Ebooks
A philosophical reflection on how the end of the world would unfold based on hypothetical variables and relevant knowledge and historical context.
Is The End of the World right for your level?
To recognise 95% of the running words in The End of the World, you need its 5,265 most frequent word forms; for 98%, the share at which most readers manage a novel without a dictionary, 6,442. The median English C1 book in our table needs 4,633 forms for 95%, so by this measure the book is typical for its level: number 8 of 11, 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 The End of the World 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.
- million 50
- star 46
- comet 42
- infinite 32
- worlds 26
- flood 24
- collision 23
- centuries 22
- drought 21
- eternity 21
- comets 20
- suns 18
- solid 17
- crash 17
- globe 16
How does it begin?
When geological time begins, some short thousand million years ago, the earth is already a globe, in shape if not in surface much as now, whirling around a star little different if at all from our sun today; a body with its given size and substance, its allotted place and path in heaven. How it came there is unknown.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 39,220 | 6.5 h | 4.5 h | 3.5 h | 2.5 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 C1
English books at the same level that ask for a similar amount of vocabulary:
- The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith: 427,445 words, 3,061 forms for 95%
- The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli: 36,421 words, 2,401 forms for 95%
- Napoleon’s Letters to Josephine, 1796–1812, Napoleon Bonaparte: 91,618 words, 4,737 forms for 95%
- Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche: 63,710 words, 4,633 forms for 95%
- The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Mahatma Gandhi: 173,864 words, 4,476 forms for 95%
- Notre-Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo: 185,410 words, 6,219 forms for 95%
See also all English books by level and books at C1 in all five languages.