I'm going to go with nutmeg and cumin words myself.

We all have vocal and writing ticks, whether we choose to believe it or not. Listen to your friends talk, those who always say something is amazing or super--two popular words that people rely on like a crutch these days for lack of having any other way to express something is wonderful or surprising.

Famous writers throughout history have had ticks as well, words and phrases they constantly rely on, which data journalist Ben Blatt found out by examining the numbers. Blatt calls them "cinnamon words," a hat tip to Ray Bradbury who once said his favorite word to use in writing was cinnamon.

In his new book, Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve: What the Numbers Reveal About the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing, Blatt says he found the cinnamon words of many famous writers, as he tells PRI in the interview below.





Jane Austen, for example, leans on civility, fancying and imprudence consistently. Dan Brown? Grail, masonic and pyramid. Other quirks were found by Blatt, like how the word she is used only once in the entirety of The Hobbit, or that James Patterson seemingly uses 160 clichés per 100,000 words in his famed Alex Cross detective novels. (Of course, Patterson really doesn't write his books, so much as his collaborator, so I'm not sure who's to blame there.)

160 clichés, though--that's amazing. That takes a super effort.

Should they sit at the kids' table or with the adults? Seventeen famous writers as children judged.

Did you grow up eating at the kids' table during Thanksgiving? You know, when your family chose to banish you into a corner with an assortment of cousins that you rarely saw and hardly liked? The cousin who's a few oats short of a Cheerio? The other cousin who lacks personal grooming habits and doesn't know the tender touch of a facecloth? Yeah--that happened to a lot of us.

We were all kids at some point though. Some of us were debonair, and some of us were a hot mess. And so were famous writers.

Here are seventeen famous writers when they were children or teenagers--and whether they should luck out and eat with the adults or be at the kids' table for Thanksgiving:

1.) Robert Frost

Even as a baby, Frost couldn't manage a smile. And it all went downhill from here.

Kids' table!

2.) Vladimir Nabokov

The snappy tie, the tube socks channeling his wannabe inner Flashdance waiting to break free, all while rocking penny loafers.

Adults' table!

3.) Virginia Woolf

She even judges while playing cricket. You don't need her judging your homemade stuffing, too.

Kids' table!

4.) Langston Hughes

Somewhere under that giant mound of baby clothes is Hughes. Is he a wizard? He might be a wizard.

Adults' table!

5.) Roald Dahl

There's a 50% chance he just walked off the set of Downton Abbey.

Adults' table!

6.) Jorge Luis Borges

It's as if baby Spock just came back from a cruise ship adventure.

Adults' table!

7.) F. Scott Fitzgerald

A whip for the toy horse?

And we all know he's going to drink all the booze anyway...

Kids' table!

8.) Franz Kafka

Is that a goat? Ram? Sheep?

Whatever it is, it has a hat. No one can deny a hat-wearing sheep is a winning look.

Adults' table!

9.) Carl Jung

That's the face of judgment. No one needs that while eating the sweet potatoes.

Kids' table!

10.) J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien and his younger brother are channeling the pilgrim look. But they're missing the stylish hats with the belt buckles.

Kids' table!

11.) Aldous Huxley

The shoes say, "I came here on the Mayflower."

The sour face says, "I need a nap."

Kids' table!

12. Arthur Rimbaud

You just kind of get the vibe that after he passes you the bowl of peas, he'll politely read you a poem.

Adults' table!

13.) Alice Munro

You try wearing a bonnet and look so cute. You can't, can you?

Adults' table!

14.) Flannery O'Connor

She might be good with small talk, but the entire time she'll be plotting a short story where she makes you a creep.

Kids' table!

15.) Noam Chomsky

Don't let the coy smile fool you. That starched white collar channels a Miles Standish quality.

Kids' table!

16.) Victor Hugo

Little Lord Fauntleroy, is that you?

Adults' table!

17.) Stephen King

You usually only see 85-year old men wearing pants that high.

Adults' table!

The 10 (err, 11?) Greatest Sentences Ever Written [according to The American Scholar].

Let's face facts.

First off, The American Scholar's article about 10 Best Sentences is indecisive. It's actually 11, not 10.

Other issues? The 11 best sentences are written by 7 Americans, 2 Brits, an Irishman, and a Russian. Because if there's anything we can all agree on, it's that England hasn't given a lick to the field of literature. And the rest of the world? Pssh, please.

You might think this is a logical extension of the The American Scholar journal. You might ask, "But The American Scholar is all about America, no?"

No. Their own "About Us" states nothing about star-spangled Americana in literature, or that Jane Austen is an honorary member of the Tea Party.

So how is this top-10/11 made up?

8 men.
3 women.
7 Americans.
2 Brits.
1 Irishman.
1 Russian.
10 Caucasians.
1 African American.

...and that's it. Toni Morrison does double-duty covering quotas as a black woman, but otherwise there's no diversity, no extension of talent, no breadth of real insight into amazing sentences within the realm of literature. If you're a white American male, odds are you're writing literary gold, baby!

And that's the problem.

So who's included on this list? Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joan Didion, James Joyce, John Hersey, Jane Austen, Toni Morrison, Tim O'Brien, Charles Dickens, Vladimir Nabokov, and Truman Capote.

It's like a who's who of obviousness until you hit John Hersey. And lord only knows who Tim O'Brien and Joan Didion are blackmailing in the field of literature, because the orgasmic obsession some have for them can only be explained through nefarious means.

Who's needed in this top-10/11? Margaret Atwood, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Anton Chekhov, Wole Soyinka, Doris Lessing, Boris Pasternak, Junot Diaz, Alice Munro, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Salman Rushdie, Nadine Gordimer, Chinua Achebe, Samuel Beckett, Alice Walker, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kate Grenville, Leo Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Albert Camus. Pick a half dozen, swap them out with The American Scholar's list, and you've got something.

But, hey, God forbid.

Famous Writers Shirtless: Vladimir Nabokov

A fleeting internet meme happened of writers in underpants--but it passed too quickly to be truly appreciated.

So, occasionally we'll post some literary beefcake for your perusal.

Today:  Vladimir Nabokov

My eyeballs are overwhelmed. SO. MUCH. TO. TAKE. IN.

The man who gave the world Lolita is doing his best impersonation of a shirtless flamenco dancer in business shorts, while Tan Grandma's sunglasses are just--they're just, well, hypnotic.

Not to say Nabokov's muffin top studliness isn't a feast for the eyes, too. But Tan Grandma's glasses take things to another level.