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How long does it take to read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone?

How long to read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
about 5 hours 23 minutes
76,944 words

The first Harry Potter book is short — under 77,000 words, which is a single long afternoon and about the length of a standard adult novel. It is the shortest of the seven by some margin. Rowling's original manuscript was reportedly around 90,000 words and was cut before publication, so the published text is roughly 15% shorter than what she submitted. The Jim Dale audiobook runs about eight and a quarter hours, half again as long as reading it.

The numbers

Total
5 hours 23 minutes
In hours
5.4 hours
Non-stop
0.2 days without sleeping
Covers
76,944 words
At a realistic pace
an hour a night
That works out as
about 6 days
As an audiobook
8 hours 18 minutes

What this assumes

76,944 words at 238 words per minute.

Other books

What How long
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix about 18 hours
The Hobbit about 6 hours 39 minutes
The Bible about 55 hours
War and Peace about 40 hours
Infinite Jest about 40 hours
Moby-Dick about 15 hours
Ulysses about 19 hours
Dune about 13 hours
Pride and Prejudice about 8 hours 33 minutes
Nineteen Eighty-Four about 6 hours 14 minutes
The Great Gatsby about 3 hours 18 minutes
Animal Farm about 2 hours 6 minutes
It about 31 hours
The complete works of Shakespeare about 59 hours
The complete Sherlock Holmes about 72 hours as an audiobook
All of English Wikipedia about 41 years

Common questions

How long does it take to read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone?
about 5 hours 23 minutes — 76,944 words.
What does that assume?
76,944 words at 238 words per minute.
How long at a realistic pace?
an hour a night — about 6 days.

Related pages

Sources

  1. Calculated on this page — At One Place

How these figures are compiled and checked