---
title: "How long to read Ulysses? about 19 hours"
description: "Ulysses takes about 19 hours — about 265,000 words. What that assumes, how it breaks down, and how long at a realistic pace."
url: https://atoneplace.net/how-long-to/ulysses/
site: "At One Place"
---

# How long does it take to read Ulysses?

**How long to read Ulysses: about 19 hours**

about 265,000 words

Ulysses is around 265,000 words, about nineteen hours at a standard reading rate — a figure that is almost meaningless in practice, because very little of the book is standard prose. The final chapter is eight sentences long across roughly 24,000 words with no punctuation. The whole novel covers a single day, 16 June 1904, so it takes about nineteen hours to read about eighteen hours of story, which is very nearly real time. The Jim Norton unabridged audiobook runs 27 hours 16 minutes.

## The numbers

- **Total:** 18 hours 33 minutes
- **In hours:** 18.6 hours
- **Non-stop:** 0.8 days without sleeping
- **Covers:** about 265,000 words
- **At a realistic pace:** an hour a night
- **That works out as:** about 19 days
- **As an audiobook:** 27 hours 16 minutes

## What this assumes

About 265,000 words at 238 words per minute. The rate assumes non-technical linear prose, which Ulysses conspicuously is not.

## Other books

| What | How long |
| --- | --- |
| Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone | about 5 hours 23 minutes |
| 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 |
| 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 Ulysses?

about 19 hours — about 265,000 words.

### What does that assume?

About 265,000 words at 238 words per minute. The rate assumes non-technical linear prose, which Ulysses conspicuously is not.

### How long at a realistic pace?

an hour a night — about 19 days.

## Related pages

- [How long to read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone?](https://atoneplace.net/how-long-to/harry-potter-philosophers-stone/)
- [How long to read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix?](https://atoneplace.net/how-long-to/harry-potter-order-of-the-phoenix/)
- [How long to read The Hobbit?](https://atoneplace.net/how-long-to/the-hobbit/)
- [How long to read the Bible?](https://atoneplace.net/how-long-to/the-bible/)
- [How long to read War and Peace?](https://atoneplace.net/how-long-to/war-and-peace/)
- [How long to read Infinite Jest?](https://atoneplace.net/how-long-to/infinite-jest/)
- [How long to read Moby-Dick?](https://atoneplace.net/how-long-to/moby-dick/)
- [How long to read Dune?](https://atoneplace.net/how-long-to/dune/)
- [How long to read the Harry Potter series?](https://atoneplace.net/how-long-to/harry-potter-series/)
- [How long to watch Friends?](https://atoneplace.net/how-long-to/friends/)
- [How long to watch One Piece?](https://atoneplace.net/how-long-to/one-piece/)
- [How long to watch The Simpsons?](https://atoneplace.net/how-long-to/the-simpsons/)
- [How long to watch The Office (US)?](https://atoneplace.net/how-long-to/the-office-us/)
- [How long to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe?](https://atoneplace.net/how-long-to/marvel-cinematic-universe/)

## Sources

- Calculated on this page — At One Place (/about/)