BookShared
  • MEMBER AREA    
  • Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve: What the Numbers Reveal About the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing

    (By Ben Blatt)

    Book Cover Watermark PDF Icon Read Ebook
    ×
    Size 26 MB (26,085 KB)
    Format PDF
    Downloaded 654 times
    Last checked 13 Hour ago!
    Author Ben Blatt
    “Book Descriptions: What are our favorite authors’ favorite words? Which bestselling writer uses the most clichés? How can we judge a book by its cover?

    Data meet literature in this playful and informative look at our favorite authors and their masterpieces. There’s a famous piece of writing advice—offered by Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, and myriad writers in between—not to use -ly adverbs like “quickly” or “fitfully.” It sounds like solid advice, but can we actually test it? If we were to count all the -ly adverbs these authors used in their careers, do they follow their own advice compared to other celebrated authors? What’s more, do great books in general—the classics and the bestsellers—share this trait?

    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 bestsellers getting dumber over time? Which bestselling writer uses the most clichés? What makes a great opening sentence? How can we judge a book by its cover? And which writerly advice is worth following or ignoring?”

    Google Drive Logo DRIVE
    Book 1

    Docile

    ★★★★★

    K.M. Szpara

    Book 1

    The Nude

    ★★★★★

    C. Michelle Lindley

    Book 1

    The Neil Gaiman Reader: Selected Fiction

    ★★★★★

    Neil Gaiman

    Book 1

    Positive

    ★★★★★

    Paige Rawl

    Book 1

    Alice Adams

    ★★★★★

    Booth Tarkington

    Book 1

    The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature

    ★★★★★

    David George Haskell

    Book 1

    Yellow and the Perception of Reality

    ★★★★★

    Maureen F. McHugh

    Book 1

    Not Always a Saint (The Lost Lords, #7)

    ★★★★★

    Mary Jo Putney

    Book 1

    Barely Functional Adult: It’ll All Make Sense Eventually

    ★★★★★

    Meichi Ng

    Book 1

    Mountain of Black Glass (Otherland, #3)

    ★★★★★

    Tad Williams

    Book 1

    My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues

    ★★★★★

    Pamela Paul

    Book 1

    A Righteous Man

    ★★★★★

    Tochi Onyebuchi

    Book 1

    Soulstar (The Kingston Cycle, #3)

    ★★★★★

    C.L. Polk

    Book 1

    Children of the New World

    ★★★★★

    Alexander Weinstein

    Book 1

    The Black Maybe: Liminal Tales

    ★★★★★

    Attila Veres

    Book 1

    Veronica

    ★★★★★

    Mary Gaitskill