[chaley]

First, you can make the python function faster by changing the code as follows:

def evaluate(self, formatter, kwargs, mi, locals, val):
    list1 = val
    l2 = ['adult', 'adventure', 'anthologies', 'biography', ..., 'young adult']
    l1 = [l.strip() for l in list1.split(',') if l.strip()]
    l1lcase = [icu_lower(l) for l in l1]
    res = set()
    for idx,item in enumerate(l1lcase):
        if item in l2:
            res.add(l1[idx])
    return ', '.join(res)

The reason to use a set for res is to avoid having the same entry in the result more than once. This will matter in the code below.

You can do the 'like' examples using something like:

    for item in l1lcase:
        if 'horror' in item or item in ['scary', 'spooky']:
            res.add('Horror')
            break
    for item in l1lcase:
        if 'mystery' in item or 'detective' in item:
            res.add('Mystery')
            break

When the "in" operator is applied as "string in string", it is a "contains" operation.

The set is necessary here because the added item might already be in the result, thus adding it more than once.