A 90-minute read

 One more thing about Theodore Zeldin’s little book Conversations that I admire: its form. I wish I could interest other writers in it.

The book is about a topic I’m interested in, and it’s brief — about 15,000 words.

I can tell you how long it took me to read it: 90 minutes. I’m pretty sure of that because that’s how long it took Zeldin to read it aloud on the radio.

Zeldin’s book is six chapters long. Each was a 15-minute talk on the BBC.

Readers typically cover 150 to 160 words a minute.

Ballpark: 2,500 words per talk or chapter, 15,000 for all six.

In print, the book has about 250 words per page, meaning each chapter runs about 10 pages — about 60 pages of text. The book has 36 pages of pictures by the author, each of which is tied to a question about conversations. Throw in the list of questions and the usual introductory material, and you have a book of 103 pages.

I have some books of more than 500 pages on my shelves and wouldn’t part with them. But I wish writers and readers would come to an agreement that 60 pages of text is a good length for an introduction to a topic.

• Source: Theodore Zeldin, Conversation; London: The Harvill Press, 1998.