Nabokov's Favourite Word Is Mauve: The literary quirks and oddities of our most-loved authors

Nabokov's Favourite Word Is Mauve: The literary quirks and oddities of our most-loved authors by Ben Blatt

What are our favourite authors' words? Which bestselling writer uses the most clichés? How can we judge a book by its cover? Data meets literature in this playful and informative look at our favourite authors and their masterpieces. 

'What fun this is! Ben Blatt's charming book applies numerical know-how to questions of literary style, teasing out insights about cliffhangers, adverbs' JORDAN ELLENBERG, author of How Not to Be Wrong

'Lively ... worthwhile ... Read this book thoughtfully. It's fun. And, I think, the shape of interesting things to come' The Times 

'Fascinating ... the book had me humming with pleasure' The Sunday Times 

Nabokov's Favourite Word is Mauve is a playful look at what the numbers have to say about our favourite authors and their classic books.

Journalist and statistician Ben Blatt asks the questions that have intrigued curious book lovers for generations: Does each writer have their own stylistic footprint? Do men and women write differently? What are the crutch words our best-loved authors fall back on?

Spanning from Shakespeare and Jane Austen to fan fiction, JK Rowling and Stephen King, Blatt reveals the quirks and oddities of the world's greatest writers. 

This is a lighthearted, humorous book that uses numbers to inform our understanding of words to enlighten, to clarify, and, above all, to entertain.

Nabokov's Favourite Word Is Mauve: The literary quirks and oddities of our most-loved authors - About the Author

Ben Blatt is a staff writer for Slate, where he has garnered a solid fan following with articles including 'Text Analysis of the Hunger Games' and 'Which Friends were the Closest Friends?' (see included links in the proposal). He is a recent Harvard graduate and a Harvard Lampoon alumnus. Grove released his first book, I Don't Care If We Never Get Back: 30 Games in 30 Days on the Best Worst Baseball Road Trip Ever, co-written with Eric Brewster, this spring - a humorous account of their road trip to all 30 Major League Baseball parks that Ben designed via computer algorithm: