Northern marked Harry Potter Book Day last week by suggesting classic books that its passengers could read during their daily commute.

The operator has calculated that at the average reading rate of 250 words per minute, a commuter travelling the average fifty minutes per day (twenty-five minutes in each direction) on three days during a week could get through 37,500 words.

The world’s fastest speed-reader reads one hundred times as fast as that, so could, in theory, read all seven Harry Potter books in just forty-four minutes.

Ten examples of classic books the average commuter could read during three days of commuting:

• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (23,760 words)
• A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney (24,000 words)
• Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote (26,433 words)
• The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie (27,000 words)
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (28,668 words)
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (28,944 words)
• Animal Farm by George Orwell (29,966 words)
• Of Mice & Men by John Steinbeck (30,000 words)
• The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (32,149 words)
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (36,000 words)

Bookswap schemes run at some Northern stations, such as Alderley Edge.

Mark Powles, commercial and customer director at Northern, said: “For many people, the commute is the only time of day they truly get to themselves – and for those that let the train take the strain, they can really switch off.

“The majority of people that commute with us travel 25 minutes in each direction, that’s 50 minutes a day they could spend with their head in a good book – and if you’ve already read all the Harry Potter books, there are plenty of other classics you could enjoy on your commute.

“Literary enlightenment aside, people that take the train to work also save an average of 48 minutes per day compared to making the same journey by car.

“Everyone can compare the cost, travel time and CO₂e impact of their journey against the equivalent trip by road on the Savings Calculator on our website.”