Mining Data from Readers

Literanista April 7, 2010

Music blogger MusicMachinery recently wrote an interesting post on insights he would like to see captured by the data mining software on certain ereaders. His list was awesome:

Most Abandoned – the books and/or authors that are most frequently left unfinished. What book is the most abandoned book of all time? (My money is on ‘A Brief History of Time’) A related metric – for any particular book where is it most frequently abandoned? (I’ve heard of dozens of people who never got past ‘The Council of Elrond’ chapter in LOTR).
Pageturner – the top books ordered by average number of words read per reading session. Does the average Harry Potter fan read more of the book in one sitting than the average Twilight fan?
Burning the midnight oil – books that keep people up late at night.
Read Speed – which books/authors/genres have the lowest word-per-minute average reading rate? Do readers of Glenn Beck read faster or slower than readers of Jon Stewart?
Most Re-read – which books are read over and over again? A related metric – which are the most re-read passages? Is it when Frodo claims the ring, or when Bella almost gets hit by a car?
Mystery cheats – which books have their last chapter read before other chapters.
Valuable reference – which books are not read in order, but are visited very frequently? (I’ve not read my Python in a nutshell book from cover to cover, but I visit it almost every day).
Biggest Slogs – the books that take the longest to read.
Back to the start – Books that are most frequently re-read immediately after they are finished.
Page shufflers – books that most often send their readers to the glossary, dictionary, map or the elaborate family tree. (xkcd offers some insights)
Trophy Books – books that are most frequently purchased, but never actually read.
Dishonest rater – books that most frequently rated highly by readers who never actually finished reading the book
Most efficient language – the average time to read books by language. Do native Italians read ‘Il nome della rosa‘ faster than native English speakers can read ‘The name of the rose‘?
Most attempts – which books are restarted most frequently? (It took me 4 attempts to get through Cryptonomicon, but when I did I really enjoyed it).
A turn for the worse – which books are most frequently abandoned in the last third of the book? These are the books that go bad.
Never at night – books that are read less in the dark than others.
Entertainment value – the books with the lowest overall cost per hour of reading (including all re-reads)