Comments on: Most highlighted passages on Kindle

By: Modano

Modano — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:57:00 +0000

You’re in luck, because you can turn off “popular highlights” on the Kindle. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about how this actually works.

By: AviSolomon

AviSolomon — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:20:00 +0000

Like heat-maps for NFL games. Thank God for Jane Austen though!

By: traalfaz

traalfaz — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:13:00 +0000

Yup, I have a Nook and was thinking about getting a Kindle as well, but now, I think not.
I only ever side-load files into any ebook reader that I own, and I rarely even turn the radio on, so it may not be an issue for me, but I think I’ll just keep my money away from them. Amazon gets a TON of my money in other ways but I haven’t bought books from them since moving to ebooks.

By: sweetcraspy

sweetcraspy — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:33:00 +0000

Oh, totally. I’m not arguing that the Kindle Most-Highlighted feature is a metric of quality. I just understand why that particular line could resonate so well with readers, and I think we could find other examples of cliched sentiments that truly are the first exposure many people get to an idea. I think it’s a mistake to look down one’s nose at those people for not finding it in a more refined context.

Your point about general fiction vs YA or genre fiction is well taken and speaks to my own blind spots on subject matter.

By: niktemadur

niktemadur — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:22:00 +0000

And a bottle of mineral water by the suicide note?

By: niktemadur

niktemadur — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:19:00 +0000

If there’s one passage from any book that I would highlight, it has to be this one from Salman Rushdie’s “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”:

The world is not cyclical, not eternal or immutable, but endlessly transforms itself, and never goes back, and we can assist in that transformation.

Live on, survive, for the earth gives forth wonders. It may swallow your heart, but the wonders keep on coming. You stand before them bareheaded, shriven. What is expected of you is attention.

By: NatWu

NatWu — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 05:48:00 +0000

TLDR: shit happens.

By: NatWu

NatWu — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 05:46:00 +0000

Perhaps it’s not a big topic in the books most YA readers read, but I’d have to say that very thing has been done quite a bit. Look at Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections” as an example. I’m not recommending that book because I hated it, just presenting it as an example. Or pretty much all of Wally Lamb’s books, although they mostly jump the shark for too much bad stuff happening. My point is, there’s really well written books (which even sometimes are considered literature) that do deal with the direct and indirect effects that mental illness has on a family without demonizing it.

Of course, I’m not turning up my nose at genre fiction which presents the same story at a level accessible to more people. It’s just that the lower a level you write at, the less you’re likely to have written anything worth quoting. Not that it’s impossible, but that passage mentioned above does not stand out as a particularly memorable or profound example of prose, so I can’t really see a point in quoting it.

By: Mari Lwyd

Mari Lwyd — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 04:46:00 +0000

That Jane Austen, what a kidder. The actual universal truth is:
A single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of strippers and blow.

By: rausantaella

rausantaella — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:27:00 +0000

You can tell your device you don’t want to share your highlights. Anyway, they’re not going to disclose the highlighters – only how many people highlighted something. That is, if you highlight the least popular sentence in the book it isn’t even to show there.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:27:00 +0000

It’s like buying a used textbook.

By: Cerdo Merol

Cerdo Merol — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:06:00 +0000

That’s so sad, aside of the hunger games, most quotes are from self help books.

By: Andrea Dickson

Andrea Dickson — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:50:00 +0000

No. No, there are not.

By: Guest

Guest — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:24:00 +0000

“sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them”

By: ymendel

ymendel — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:02:00 +0000

I wonder how many people have Moby Dick on their Kindles with only the word “Eskimo” highlighted.

By: ceisteanna

ceisteanna — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:58:00 +0000

I’m amazed that so many of the commenters are making value judgments about the quality of the highlighted sections. Out of context we can’t judge the quality of any reference, e.g. the Jane Austen quote could be used to illustrate how comma use has changed over time.

By: Dewi Morgan

Dewi Morgan — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:24:00 +0000

Books have laugh tracks, now?

By: Dewi Morgan

Dewi Morgan — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:21:00 +0000

I was gonna like your post, but my eyes flicked sideways as I went to click. Only one other like? Safe to click, then. I’m not sheeple… maybe.

By: Mimihaha

Mimihaha — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:50:00 +0000

Does this work on the Nook as well? Because I haven’t come across any highlighted passages at all. But then, I have not read The Hunger Games and my Austen is in book form.

By: greybird

greybird — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:33:00 +0000

Does this suggest that a lot of schools are assigning the Hunger Games as required reading? Because really, who but school children highlight?

“Can’t.focus.must.add.colors…..[zonk]“

By: baguioboy

baguioboy — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:32:00 +0000

I always turn this off, because it annoys me to have the software telling me “this is the line that everyone else thought was really important! Pay attention to it!” It just makes the writing seem artificial, even if that wasn’t what the author was trying to do.

By: atimoshenko

atimoshenko — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:08:00 +0000

And that’s why I turned off the highlighting feature on my Kindle and Kindle apps.

By: retepslluerb

retepslluerb — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Do they disclose who highlighted something?

Would be news to me.

By: retepslluerb

retepslluerb — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:57:00 +0000

Huh? It’s a feature people want to use. How else would they restore your annotations and keep them sync across devices?

I can fully understand that you do not WANT them to track.

I believe that’s what the “do not sync”-option is for.

By: B E Pratt

B E Pratt — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:43:00 +0000

Just because you paid for it doesn’t mean that we do not own you. Deal with it.

By: YourMessageHere

YourMessageHere — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:36:00 +0000

Privacy? Laughable, I know, but for some reason I can’t quite shake this feeling that my stuff is mine, not rented from Amazon.

Edit: can’t you turn off the visibility of your highlighting to others? If not, why the hell not?

By: lavardera

lavardera — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:32:00 +0000

So then, has “Highlighting” for the cloud officially replaced ”Highlighting” for your own personal and private use?

Was there no memo about the change? How many people have no idea they are ”Highlighting” in a public space? Will they find out at their next job interview…?

By: lavardera

lavardera — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:29:00 +0000

I am creeped out.

By: Neil de Carteret

Neil de Carteret — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:23:00 +0000

“Highlighting” on a Kindle is specifically for the purposes of sharing the highlighted section. How could they not “track” it?

By: sweetcraspy

sweetcraspy — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:22:00 +0000

This is a mainstream novel dealing tangentially with mental illness and the effect it has on people’s lives. I don’t think it’s a common topic and I think the book dealt with it very honestly.

By putting that passage in the book, the author is telling her readers that if they are depressed, it is not their fault and they are not alone. Given that so much media demonizes or trivializes mental illnesses, I think it’s an important message and can understand how it would resonate with so many people.

[mild early Hunger Games spoilers below]

Katniss’s mother becomes depressed, disengages from the world and stops caring for her family when her husband dies. This leaves Katniss to raise her sister and care for her mother at a very young age. Her mother recovers somewhat over the years with the help of some hand-wavy herbal medicine, but the relationship between the characters remains strained.

Katniss resents her mother for disengaging, but comes to recognize that it wasn’t her mother’s fault that she was depressed in a world with no mental health care. Rebuilding the trust between the characters is is a subplot that reflects Katniss’s general character arc (up to where I have read at least) .