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Man, this book is depressing

Researchers in the UK come up with a literary misery index that corresponds with economic downturns.

This final note today, just because we don’t have enough economic indicators to tell you about. Researchers over in the UK have come up with a literary misery index.

They cross referenced the word choices in 5 million books — thank you Google digitization — and came up with their index by comparing sad words minus happy words.

Lo and behold, bad economic times do show up in literature, but — and this is the depressing part — there’s about a ten year lag.

So books in about five years are gonna be really depressing.

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