Whose style do you review in?

I came across the site I Write Like..., which claims to tell you whose style a passage you submit is written in, and tried it on some of my reviews. Surprisingly, six of those I tried remind it of H. P. Lovecraft. Sadly, four seem to be like Dan Brown. Various other authors got one each, e.g. James Joyce for my review of Eye of Argon.

This is obviously nothing anyone should take seriously, but you might think it fun.

Weird (or should I say "eldritch"?).

They said this one was like Dan Brown and this one was like H.P. Lovecraft. I don't see it.

Then there's one that's like someone called "Johathan Swift".

Although I, too, am getting mostly H.P. Lovecraft and Dan Brown, I am, apparently, quite an eclectic writer as I've also written like Mario Puzo, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Margaret Atwood, Kurt Vonnegut and Jane Austen.

I tried 20 of my reviews and I think it would be fun to put together a spreadsheet of which reviews garnered which author style.

5 of mine were considered Stephen King and appropriately my Dark Tower Graphic Novel was one of them.

5 where considered Dan Brown, I think at least 4 of them were on YA novels

2 each for Edgar Allen Poe, Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Atwood, and James Joyce

1 for Daniel Defoe and Vladimir Nabokov, the Nabokov was for a very dark murder mystery.

James Joyce twice.
H.P. Lovecraft, Charles Dickens, and Ray Bradbury each once.

To my shame, Stephen King and Dan Brown each once.

And that was enough.

Robert

I thought my style of reviewing was pretty uniform, so I was surprised to see that I got Ian Fleming, David Foster Wallace, H.P. Lovecraft, and Vladimir Nabokov for my four most recent reviews. Stranger and stranger . . . I don't think I'll try any more reviews.

Perhaps even more disturbingly, when I put in a few paragraphs from other writing, I got Anne Rice. And then, William Shakespeare.

I took the 3 stories that I had submitted to a writing contest, and ran them through the analysis. I had posted two of them on threads in The Green Dragon group quite some time ago.

The story I called "An Adirondack Morning" was apparently written in the style of Sci-Fi writer Ursula K. LeGuin.

My "How Swiss Cheese Came to Be" was falsely appraised to be in the style of Dan Brown. I reject this assertion, as there were no chapters (not even a 1-page chapter), no cliffhangers, and wasn't like ~anything~ I had written prior to it.

The final story was a piece I had written from the point of view of a child who had wandered off from his family and safely found his own way home. Alas, it was likened to the writings of David Foster Wallace - an author who suffered from severe depression, and committed suicide at the age of 36.

I think the analysis site need some fine tuning.

Fun.

I tried it on some of my most thumbed reviews - they're obviously my best prose, right?

Arthur C Clarke - For three

David Foster wallace - er who?
Chuck Palahniuk
Dan Brown - boo. On a Pratchett review too!
Kurt Vonnegut - I don't think so.
Ursula Le Guin - maybe i should stop on a winner
HP Lovecraft

I obviously have somethign of an SF style to my review writing, even for non-fiction books.

Fun. I tried 30 of my reviews.

6 reviews were like - David Foster Wallace (never heard of him), H. P. Lovecraft
4 - james James Joyce
2 - D. Brown, P. G. Wodehouse, H. G. Wells
1 - S. King, C. Palahniuk, E. A. Poe, D. Adams, A. C. Clarke, R. Bradbury, U. K. LeGuin ... and Stephanie Meyer!!

I tried it on my LT reviews. This is what got:

David Foster Wallace - 4 (like reading_fox, who?)
Vladimir Nabokov - 2
Jonathan Swift - 2
Dan Brown - 2
Mary Shelley - 1
James Joyce - 1
Charles Dickens - 1
Kurt Vonnegut - 1

Surprisingly, I haven't read most of this authors, and the ones that I did, I read in Portuguese, not in English.

I also tried on two original texts of mine, one rather old, and that I think needs much revising that got Dan Brown (now I know it really needs revising), and another very recent, that ended up as David Foster Wallace (I think I'll might try to read something by this guy, just to see what it is about)

David Wallace

Blasted touchstones. That's a direct link to his LT page. Seems to be a fairly famous (now dead) american post-modernest satirist. I'm not sure any of the reviews inspired me to try any of his work though, and it's certainly not how I'd describe my writing!

That was fun but it also proves that I have too much time on my hands!

I tried 34 of my 61 LT reviews. This is what I got,

11 times I got H. P. Lovecraft. For reviews as diverse as a popular modern book like The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and popular classics like The Moonstone and Death of a Salesman to relatively unfamiliar books like Life with Father, The Mystery of the Yellow Room and The Playboy of the Western World virtually unknown old books like London Lavender and The Queen of Hearts. The reviews ranged from raving (London Lavender, The Queen of Hearts, The Playboy of the Western World, Death of a Salesman, etc.) to negative (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, The Moonstone, etc.).

5 times I got James Joyce. One of them was a popular one (The Book Thief), the rest were unknown old books (For The Blood Is The Life And Other Stories, The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories, A House to Let, etc.). The tones of the reviews were relatively positive.

4 times I got David Foster Wallace. From my most negative review to date (The Time Travelers Wife) to the review of one of my best loved (and so a positive review) mystery books (Cards on the Table). Also, one of my most thumbed reviews ever (Nightmare Abbey).

Charles Dickens, Chuck Palahniuk, Jane Austen and J. D. Salinger I got twice each. Funnily, both of the time I got Charles Dickens was for reviews of Charles Dickens books. Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur C. Clarke, Bram Stoker, Vladimir Nabokov and Isaac Asimov I got once each.

My reading taste is eclectic and so is apparently my writing style. But perhaps I should give writing supernatural and creepy stories a try, seeing that how I got Lovecraft 11 times.

Word selection seems to be the determining factor:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/17/i-write-like-website-goes_n_650037.html

Robert