Homer · 1835
5–8 unknown words per 100 at CET-4 level. Looking each one up will stall you; this one wants glosses that appear in place.
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 721 of them.
CET-6 and up, or read it with glosses. 129,302 words in total; at 150 words a minute for a non-native reader, about 14 h 22 min to finish. Average sentence length 29.8 words — on the long side, so the load comes from sentence structure as much as from vocabulary. Reaching 95% coverage on this book (the floor for readability) takes roughly 14,000 word families.
The opening of The Odyssey, 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.
Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these things, oh daughter of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them.
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The numbers above are computed, but we haven't cut The Odyssey into passages yet.
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These are already built, and closest in difficulty to The Odyssey.
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.