Book Review: Nabokov's Favorite Word is Mauve

For a book on data analytics, this is very readable and engaging. I'm considering giving it to my freshman science writing class because it analyzes the familiar (authors like J.K. Rowling) using simple word-counting methods to determine interesting things like trends in opening lines, adherence in practice to their own stated rules for writing (most are true to their own advice, especially after they give it!), and, as the title suggests, favorite words. There's a mildly depressing part about how the bestselling books are now written at a 6th-grade level, when in the 1960s they were up around a 10th-grade level. Well, that one is more particularly depressing for a first-time author whose own book clocks in at a tenth-grade level, but I'm not sure if it counts as good news for anybody. This is more about introducing the idea of analysis than it is about really getting into what makes writing work. But for what it is, it's engaging and makes this reader want to do some analysis of his own.