From “compelling and mystical” to “makes you want to commit suicide”: Quantifying the spectrum of online reader responses

The exploration of what makes a story interesting remains a popular topic in narrative theory. This study aims to contribute to the study of narrative interest by analyzing of a corpus of online amateur reviews of Marilynne Robinson’s debut novel Housekeeping from Amazon.com, Goodreads.com, and Librarything.com. The expectation is that, even on these vast, fluid social networking sites, there will still be patterns in the content of reviews, indicating evolving or established positioning strategies and practices. This study presents a viable, replicable method for quantifying what this particular group of amateur critics value in a text, thereby arriving at a deeper understanding of online review forums and the people who use them.