Start gifting
Libro.fm for Business
Start a membership, get two free audiobooks
Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create account
Shop the sale
In celebration of Independent Bookstore Day, shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks from April 22nd-28th. Don’t miss out—purchases support your local bookstore!
Shop nowNabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreIn 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?
Blatt draws upon existing analysis techniques and invents some of his own. All of his investigations and experiments are original, conducted himself, and no math knowledge is needed to understand the results. This eye-opening book will provide you with a new appreciation for your favorite authors and a fresh perspective on your own writing, illuminating both the patterns that hold great prose together and the brilliant flourishes that make it unforgettable.
Ben Blatt, a former staff writer for Slate and the Harvard Lampoon, has brought his fun approach to data journalism to topics such as Seinfeld, mapmaking, The Beatles, and Jeopardy! His previous book, co-written with Eric Brewster, is I Don't Care if We Never Get Back, which follows the duo's quest to go on the mathematically optimal baseball road trip, traveling 20,000 miles to a game in all thirty ballparks in thirty days without planes. Blatt's work has also been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and Deadspin.
Vikas Adam is a classically trained actor with numerous credits in stage, film, commercials, and television, in addition to his over 200 audiobooks. He's established himself as one who creates versatile, distinct, and clear voices for characters he embodies. Equally at home with a light piece of literature or a dark thriller, a short story or an epic novel (his longest-forty-nine hours!), Vikas's audiobooks have garnered numerous awards and nominations, including AudioFile Earphones Awards, various Best of the Year lists, and the Audie Award. When not recording, acting, or directing, he's a lecturer in the Theater Department at UCLA. He was an inaugural inductee into the Audible Narrator Hall of Fame.