Gustave Flaubert · 1821
Heavy going at CET-4 level. Not unreadable — just not readable the look-every-word-up way.
Coverage = the share of words in the text you already know. The research gives two lines: 98% before independent fluent reading is realistic, 95% for the instructional level that needs support (Hu & Nation, 2000). Proper nouns are not counted as unknown — recognising that it is a name is enough; this book has 641 of them.
Advanced — read it with glosses. 115,865 words in total; at 150 words a minute for a non-native reader, about 12 h 52 min to finish. Average sentence length 16.6 words. This book is heavy on rare, archaic and invented words: even 25,000 high-frequency word families will not reach 95% coverage — its difficulty is not in the common vocabulary.
The opening of Madame Bovary, word for word. Tap any word you don't know and its meaning here appears beside it — no sign-up, tap as often as you like.
We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a “new fellow,” not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if just surprised at his work.
The head-master made a sign to us to sit down. Then, turning to the class-master, he said to him in a low voice--
“Monsieur Roger, here is a pupil whom I recommend to your care; he’ll be in the second. If his work and conduct are satisfactory, he will go into one of the upper classes, as becomes his age.”
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These are already built, and closest in difficulty to Madame Bovary.
Ordered by unknown words per 100. Lower reads easier; to step up a level, pick a higher number.
Computed by Readii from the public-domain text (updated 2026-10-21), not estimated by hand. The Readii reading level is our own scale, anchored on unknown-word density; it is not the same system as Lexile or AR and does not convert directly. Unknown words are measured against the CET-4 ∪ Gaokao lists, so this is difficulty for a Chinese-speaking learner, not a native-child reading level.