Welcome to Litsy!

This was my #doublespin for Jan, finished this weekend. It's a deep dive into data analytics of literature - classics, modern, popular fiction, fan fiction. Really engaging and surprisingly funny. @TheAromaofBooks

This is a fun look at word stats in various books, but I'm not sure how significant it is.

An interesting analysis on top sellers and classics performed by the author. Data is tricky because it is easily manipulated to tell any story depending on your angle. In this case, I doubt there was anything intentionally misleading but it is good to keep in mind the fact the author is a journalist/writer, not a data scientist or professional. Still, there were some interesting takeaways and the book was a quick, easy read.

Such a weird, fun, odd, interesting, and quirky book! This book looks at classics, bestsellers, award winners and analyzes them using modern tech like word counts & algorithms. All those “rules of English” you learned in school, are they right? Do “good” books statistically have less cliches, exclamation points, or -Ly descriptors? What defines good? What is an author‘s favorite word? The answers are fascinating, and sometimes just plain weird.

This was fun and interesting in unexpected ways! @Riveted_Reader_Melissa I will have this in the mail to you tomorrow :)

@tjwill @BarbaraTheBibliophage

Very interesting nonfiction book talking about novel statistics, e.g. mostly used words, the best first or last sentences, typical words used by men and women and the quantity of different novels. It made me chuckle a lot of times. And it comes with a huge TBR list in the appendix - actually the database Blatt was using for research. 😍
Can you guess the most impressive first sentence of a novel, that is recognizable at once by almost everyone?

Though there‘s a lot of more grinning going on in popular fiction. […] Men grin.

This will be my next read. I saw @BarbaraTheBibliophage ‘s feedback and had to buy it. I do not only like to read fiction, but non-fiction as well - which talks about my favourite fiction. 🤪

Blatt uses statistical analysis to examine books written by bestselling, classic, or award winning authors. It sounds like 💤 but it‘s not. His writing is readable and I like his wry sense of humor. And I‘ll never view the cliffhanger at the end of a chapter the same. Not to mention adverbs ending in -ly. Word nerd heaven!

Full review http://www.TheBibliophage.com #thebibliophage2021 #nonfiction2021 #aboutreading #nisfornonfiction

This book looks at what makes an author unique by the numbers of individual words, types of phrases, length of sentences, chapters, etc. There were some slower parts, but in general I thought it was an interesting analysis of how authors use language. And I love visual data!
#NforNonfiction

@BarbaraTheBibliophage I just put this in the mail to you. They said it should be there by Tuesday!

It has charts and graphs! I‘m looking forward to reading this one! #NforNonfiction

This was the right book at the right time for me. It was informative, well-researched... and had no emotional valence. So the author analyzed thousands of books on a sentence- and word- level and then made observations about what trends in word choice mean. For example, do women and men write differently? What about Brits versus Americans? Do authors have a unique literary fingerprint? Empirically, what has changed about bestsellers over decades?

Quantitative analyses of literature sounded perfect for me, but I was disappointed- for every interesting application- finding a literary 'fingerprint' based on frequencies of commonly used words, or comparing authors on rates of cliches- there were one or two achingly dull ones. For example, seeing if U.S. Harry Potter fan fiction authors use 'bloke' and 'blimey' more than other U.S. fan fic, isn't to me a stunning cross-cultural finding 😴

@JoeStalksBeck I just signed up! Love this idea... now off to choose my favourite book! 🤔😊

Finally received my books which were being held hostage in my building's locked storeroom for 4 days. 😡 Happy I have them now though. 🌵📚 #bookhaul

I had a lovely, relaxing 35th birthday weekend that included some quality reading time. 💜 I was so excited to receive these 4 books from my sister @BennettBookworm and my boyfriend @wanderer15 ! I want to read all of them immediately (if only Monday was part of the weekend...). Hope everyone had a nice weekend!

I don't know who started this one, but here I go! (ETA: it's the marvelous @JoScho ❤️❤️❤️)

1️⃣💜🖤💙
2️⃣🚀🛸
3️⃣🐈
4️⃣Rare watercolour pigments🖌️
5️⃣🍫
6️⃣Crunchy chips
7️⃣Of the three, coffee☕

This book has some fascinating information! I think I enjoyed the earlier sections more, but all of it was interesting. I also downloaded the PDF so that I could look at the charts, an incredibly important part of this book.

#nonfiction #audiobook

“Authors end up writing in a way that is both unique and consistent, just like an actual fingerprint is distinct and unchanging.”

-Ben Blatt, author of Nabokov‘s Favorite Word Is Mauve, on how authors can be identified by something as simple as their usage of “The” and “And” in their writing.

It's a beautiful evening and I made it home at a decent hour to enjoy it. I started this on my walk and am already finding it fascinating! I need to see if I can download the PDF so I can look at the graphs, but I'm sticking with audio because I don't have easy access to the print version nor time to read it now.

Fun fact for my fellow #LotRChapterADay readers: Tolkien used the word ring more than 750 times in LotR.

#audiobook #nonfiction

Just wanted to plug a book that I am excited to read (Nabokov‘s Favourite Word is Mauve by Ben Blatt) while basking in haircut freshness.

The book examines writing trends in classic and contemporary literature and dishes out all the stats. Perhaps I will finally learn whether Hemingway actually does craft the leanest sentences.

Excellent pop sociology! I like words and math and this book combined them. :)

Data and literature combine into an examination of some delicious book nerdery. Things like writing differences between male & female authors, usage of adverbs, and how much cover space author names take up. The audio was great - even though the hard copy had graphs, I didn't miss them much. Writers might enjoy this a lot more. 🔊📖📊

#readharder #booksaboutbooks #audible #audiobooks #writing #style

Jaw-dropping haul!! Three different sized book sleeves plus all the books plus a perfect wall sign! So stinking excited to get to all of these! Nice job, @Bookchipmunk !!!!! Thank you so much for all of this!!!!! And thank you, @BookishMarginalia , for all your work putting this together!

Books, they have many uses. Including assisting with a post throw up incident.....

This book is fascinating! I am really enjoying the in depth look at how authors write. Even though there are a lot of stats in this book, it's very easy to read and quite entertaining. I feel like I have learned a lot!

This book isn't going to appeal to everyone, but for a word nerd it's pretty delightful. The author uses a database to determine things like how often different authors use adverbs, follow their own writing advice, and what words they use the most. It's the kind of book some people would find stupid or boring, but for a nerdy bookworm/ writer like myself, it's interesting and fun.

While I enjoyed hearing about this book, and I like the idea of it, it's just not something I feel I will enjoy enough to read. I have too many books waiting to be read.

Nabokov was influenced by his synesthesia. And Mauve was his favorite according to his autobiography. #thewholereasoniboughtthisbook #iamobsessedwithNabokov #fangirl

A fun intersection of statistics and literature. His methodology is less rigorous, imo, than that of The Bestseller Code, but this is far more entertaining. It's a "I wonder what it would look like if I searched for..." book: What word does an author use most frequently? Do authors follow their own writing advice? And do fanfic writers try to out-British the Brits with their slang? (That was a fun one.) He did try to get a wide-ranging sample.

I unknowingly read the excerpt on #electriclit and loved it. So I preordered it and the day has arrived! I'm so close to finishing East of Eden though so I may have to flick between the two. #tbr

Blatt's got a few issues in his methodology (he's not a statistician) but he is finding interesting little corners of data. Like, who follows their own writing advice? And who uses animal similes? &shrug

Hello. #cats #catstagram #catsoflitsy #caturday #chaucerkitteh

This is a wheelhouse I didn't even know I had: data science/mining plus literary analysis. These are my people. #newbooks #epic #nerdpurr

I looked up all of Liberty's March picks tonight and added many to my TBR. This looked amazing to me, and our library system doesn't have it. Grr.

What happens when a statistician brings big data to the literary canon?

Here's an interesting read for those of you with a knack for computed linguistics:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/10/what-famous-writers-most-used-word...

I read the description of this book and immediately rolled over and showed it my belly. It sounds like an epic nerdpurr. 💕📚😍