Ideas

[Dragon Stone]

I don't know if this is controlled for yet, but there should definitely be some way to track how often an author uses cliche phrases, as is the case in most romance novels.  Some people like them; I loathe them.

They should also compare the different levels of reading comprehension.  This is extremely relevant to what a reader chooses to read.  I'll get back to you on what the different components of reading comprehension are, but I disregard any fiction book that makes me consult a dictionary every two minutes as well books by authors whose vocabularies are small and use of language thoroughly unoriginal.  One of my house mates prefers the former while my other house mate prefers the latter. 

Also, I feel mood of the writing should definitely be analyzed.  How sarcastic is the author, how funny, how serious?  To Say Nothing of the Dog is an energizing book because of its hilarity. Jane Austen's biting commentary is what makes her stand out.

Sorry.  This stuff just came to me and I needed to get it out.

[Andy]

That is a very good point and one Im sure will be incorporated, I really hope they start using that, so you can get things that are easier and harder to read dependant on your mood!!

[Aaron Stanton]

That one is certainly fairly easy to implement technically... the hard part is creating a list of all the known cliches in the world. 

We've considered this before, and the functionality is not difficult to implement.  Start giving us cliches.    Just kidding - I'm sure there are lists out there for those sorts of things.  The difficult part of this is determining what is or isn't a cliche.

Aaron

[Mandi Taylor]

The difficult part of this is determining what is or isn't a cliche.

But it wouldn't be hard to find often-repeated phrases in a single work, would it?  I'm thinking of Amazon's "Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs)".

[Stephen Rollins]

They should also compare the different levels of reading comprehension.  This is extremely relevant to what a reader chooses to read.  I'll get back to you on what the different components of reading comprehension are, but I disregard any fiction book that makes me consult a dictionary every two minutes as well books by authors whose vocabularies are small and use of language thoroughly unoriginal.  One of my house mates prefers the former while my other house mate prefers the latter. 

I believe this is already an aspect of the book that is taken into account.  I don't remember which of the ratings it fits under (haven't looked at the actual BookLamp system for a loong time... XD), but I know reading comprehension/word difficulty is definitely one of them.

[Daniel Bowen]

i think a recent post of mine is belongs in this thread as well:

http://beta.booklamp.org/forum/index.php/topic,153.0.html

... specifically, i talk about tracking 'sarcasm' among other possible literary elements of fiction.

[Aaron Stanton]

I meant to mention this earlier, but must have missed it.  I'll throw in a quick note about it before I head out for the day (I'm in NY, right at the moment, and need to make a quick update on the site before I get going).

It isn't difficult to count reoccurring phrases, or reoccurring words.  Interestingly enough, counting reoccurring words most usually comes up with the main character's names, more than anything else. 

We actually have this sort of functionality written into our patent, and it's something that will be implemented on the live system when... well, in the next one or two months, hopefully.  Depends on some factors.

I'm fairly excited because we're getting to a point that - hopefully soon - the things we're working on now will be able to start impacting the front end that people are interfacing with, so that we can say, "We're implementing this feature," and then a week later you guys and see it show up on the site.  We're not there yet, but the obstacles are coming down. 

Aaron