Today, I wanted to figure out how many words are in the book “The Shining.” Sounds simple enough, right? Well, let me tell you, it turned into a real adventure.
First, I went online and searched for the word count. I found some websites and they were giving all sorts of different numbers. One site said 128,000 words, another said 160,341, and yet another claimed it was 104,000. What a mess! It’s like they couldn’t even agree on what a word is.
So, I thought, “Fine, I’ll do it myself.” I tried a few different online word counters, even the word count in Microsoft Word, and guess what? Each one gave me a different total. It was so confusing! I guess counting words is not easy, everyone does it differently.
Then I stumbled upon some random facts. Apparently, “The Shining” was published in 1977. And some book-rating systems gave it a Lexile level of 840L and an ATOS reading level of 5.8. Whatever that means.
I even found a list of the longest novels ever written. “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand has over 560,000 words! And “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy is also way up there. Compared to those, “The Shining” seemed almost short. And speaking of short, I learned that Stephen King’s shortest book is “Cycle of the Werewolf” with only 128 pages.
I also found someone who was so bored they made a list of all of Stephen King’s works by word count. It’s crazy how much that guy has written.
Anyway, after all this digging around, I still don’t have a definitive answer for the word count of “The Shining.” But you know what? It doesn’t really matter.
The whole experience was kind of fun in a weird way. It just goes to show that even simple questions can lead you down a rabbit hole of random information and different tools.
My Key Takeaways
- Different word counters give different results.
- “The Shining” was published in 1977.
- There are some seriously long novels out there.
- People will do anything when they’re bored, even count words in books.
- Sometimes, the journey is more interesting than the destination.
And maybe, just maybe, I’ll read “The Shining” again, just to see if I can guess the word count myself. But for now, I’m putting this case to rest.
