June• 2018 | 45READER’S DIGEST
2014 and ran the Flesch-Kincaid test
on all 563 of them. Most books meant
for a general audience will fall within
the fourth- to 11th-grade range, as did
all of these bestsellers. If you look at
the scores over the decades (see chart
below), an unmistakable trend be-
comes clear: the bestseller list is full
of much simpler iction today than it
was 40 or 50 years ago. In the 1960s,
the median book had a grade level of
- Today the median grade level is 6.
On the upper end, James A.
Michener’s 1988 novelAlaskahad a
grade-level score of 11.1. Of the books
I analysed, 25 had a grade level of 9
or higher. But just two of these were
written after 2000.
On the low end, eight books tied for
the lowest score of 4.4. All were writ-
ten after 2000 by one of
three high-volume writ-
ers: James Patterson, Ja-
net Evanovich and Nora
Roberts.
here’s no way around
it. While prize-winning
literary novels such as
Jonathan Franzen’sThe
Correctionsmake the
number one spot on
occasion, overall, the
books we’re reading have
become simpler. They
aren’t the only example
of words that seem less
wise today. For instance,
US presidential State of
the Union addresses have
gone from a 17th-grade level pre-1900
to a 12th-grade level in the 1900s to
below a 10th-grade level in the 2000s,
prompting aGuardianheadline to
declare, “he state of our union is ...
dumber.” Does that mean that books- and therefore their readers – are get-
ting ‘dumber’ too?
It is true that today’s bestsellers
have much shorter sentences than the
bestsellers of the past, a drop from a
median of 17 words per sentence in
the 1960s to 12 in the 2000s. Also, to-
day’s list is much more often topped
by commercial novels than in the past.
his supports my ‘guilty pleasures’
theory.Ofcourse,therehaveal-
ways been ‘guilty pleasure’ books on
the list. In the 1960s, it wasValley of
the Dolls; in the 1970s,The Exorcist;
1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s10987658.0- 2
6.8 6.6
6.0 6.0
hischartshowsthediicultyofhe New York
Timesbestsellers, indicated by the grade level
needed to comprehend the text. he black bar
representsthemedianbookineachdecade.
he shaded region represents the middle 50 per
cent of all books analysed.GRADE LEVEL OF
THE NEW YORK TIMES
BESTSELLERS