Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve

What the Numbers Reveal About the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing

By: Ben Blatt

Narrated by: Vikas Adam

In Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve, statistician and journalist Ben Blatt brings big data to the literary canon, exploring the wealth of fun findings that remain hidden in the works of the world's greatest writers. He assembles a database of thousands of books and hundreds of millions of words, and starts asking the questions that have intrigued curious word nerds and book lovers for generations: What are our favorite authors' favorite words? Do men and women write differently? Are best sellers getting dumber over time? Which best-selling writer uses the most cliches? What makes a great opening sentence? How can we judge a book by its cover? And which writerly advice is worth following or ignoring?

Blatt draws upon existing analysis techniques and invents some of his own. All of his investigations and experiments are original, conducted himself, and no math knowledge is needed to understand the results. This revelatory book will provide you with a new appreciation for your favorite authors and a fresh perspective on your own writing, illuminating both the patterns that hold great prose together and the brilliant flourishes that make it unforgettable.

©2017 Benjamin Blatt (P)2017 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Illuminating entertainment... Literary criticism by the numbers." (Kirkus)

For Book Nerds Everywhere!

This book felt like it was written FOR ME. It’s a book about books, writing, writers, and how statistics and data can help to give us a new angle from which to survey writing from any era. Highly recommended for bibliophiles, authors, and data nerds. Great reading performance as well. 10/10 all around! Read this book!!

Research

It needs to be accompanied by the PDF file reflecting the data/ correlation being duscussed.

A fun, interesting listen for readers & writers

Enjoyable to listen to, with a good narrator and many, many interesting concepts and statistics. A good idea, well executed. If you are reading reviews to decide whether to buy the book, I'll just tell you that it's exactly what it seems to be, and it's good at it.