Amazon.com is amazing. I mean,

Amazon.com is amazing. I mean, the fact that they scan in just about every book they sell now... that you can search for my name and my father's book pops up because of that... that it finds my name IN his book is incredible. But now they've gone above and beyond.

They now list statistically inprobable phrases from within the book... just for fun. Phrases in the book that appear rarely throughout all other scanned books on the site. For instance, my father's book has used the statistically improbable phrase, "wear mitts."

Dave Eggers' Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius has, "green fluid."

Now that's all fun and cool, but that's not all. They now have a "concordance" page listing the top 100 words used in the book and how many times they are used! My mother's name appears in my father's book 82 times. Stella appears 263 times.

Together, "fuck" and "fucking" appear in Heartbreaking Work 248 times.

Finally there is the new "text stats" feature. I can't tell you how many times I looked at a book wondering, genuinely WANTING to know how many words it was. I have to know these things, don't ask why. I look at my 43,000 word manuscript that will barely make it to 60,000 words when finished and I ask, is that too short? What can I compare that to?

Not Heartbreaking Work, that's for sure. Heartbreaking Work is 155,000 words long. It's understandable, it's a rather wordy book... but I was thinking closer to 120,000 words.

My father's book comes in at 48,000 words... 12,000 less than my target. Now that's more like it. Of course, his book IS a cookbook first and foremost.

Reading levels are also calculated. My father's book is suitable for a ninth grade reading level, which is actually the highest of any of the books I just looked at. Heartbreaking Work is a sixth grade. I guess it's because my father's book is chock full of directions and Heartbreaking Work says "fuck" a lot, but the calculations seem hit and miss. Amy Hempel got a reading level just under fifth grade and it's probably because she uses short words, short sentences... but she's anything but elementary. Sometimes I have to read her stuff over again just to take it all in.

Once again, Amazon.com is the shit. How else would I know how many words are in Stephen King's The Stand? Do you know how long I've wanted to know that?

464,218 words.