Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve - Simon & Schuster 2017
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 “angrily.” 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? What’s more, do great books in general—the classics and the bestsellers—share this trait?
In the age of big data we can answer questions like these in the blink of an eye. In Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve, a “literary detective story: fast-paced, thought-provoking, and intriguing” (Brian Christian, coauthor of Algorithms to Live By), statistician and journalist Ben Blatt explores the wealth of fun findings that can be discovered by using text and data analysis. He assembles a database of thousands of books and hundreds of millions of words, and then he asks the questions that have intrigued book lovers for generations: What are our favorite authors’ favorite words? Do men and women write differently? Which bestselling writer uses the most clichés? What makes a great opening sentence? And which writerly advice is worth following or ignoring?
All of Blatt’s investigations and experiments are original, conducted himself, and no math knowledge is needed to enjoy the book. On every page, there are new and eye-opening findings. By the end, you will have a newfound appreciation of your favorite authors and also come away with a fresh perspective on your own writing. “Blatt’s new book reveals surprising literary secrets” (Entertainment Weekly) and casts an x-ray through literature, allowing us to see both the patterns that hold it together and the brilliant flourishes that allow it to spring to life.
I Don’t Care If We Never Get Back - Grove Atlantic 2014
Ben, a sports analytics wizard, loves baseball. Eric, his best friend, hates it. But when Ben writes an algorithm for the optimal baseball road trip, an impossible dream of seeing every pitch of 30 games in 30 stadiums in 30 days, who will he call on to take shifts behind the wheel, especially when those shifts will include stretches as relaxing as nineteen hours straight from Phoenix to Kansas City? Eric, of course. Will Eric regret it? You might ask, Are Dodger Dogs the same thing as Fenway Franks? As Ben and Eric can now attest, most definitely.
On June 1, 2013, Ben and Eric set out to see America through the bleachers and concession stands of America’s favorite pastime. Driving an average of ten hours a days and sleeping in the comfort of gas station backlots, every day becomes a fight against the clock in the name of a sport that doesn’t have one. But as they try to explore whether time has finally caught up to the game that has defined a nation for generations, they can’t help but get terribly lost in the process. Along the way, human error and Mother Nature throw their mathematically optimized schedule a few curveballs. A mix up in Denver turns a planned day off in Las Vegas into a twenty hour drive, for one. And a summer storm of biblical proportions in Chicago threatens to make the whole adventure logistically impossible, and that’s if they don’t kill each other first.
Charming, insightful, and hilarious, I Don’t Care If We Never Get Back is a book about the love of the game, the limits of fandom, and the limitlessness of friendship.