This^^^Linjeakel said:Maybe they get so engrossed in the book that they forget to highlight anything? Which is how it should be, IMHO.
I can't imagine wanting to stop every two minutes to highlight something in the first place - certainly not in a novel I was reading purely for pleasure. Neither am I in the least bit interested in seeing what someone else has highlighted, so I can't tell you if the same is true in the books I've read.
I understand the need to highlight in books you're studying, but outside of that, the whole idea mystifies me.![]()
I like to highlight funny or philosophical quotes in novels. Just like Goodreads allows you to add quotes to your profile. It's not exactly every two minutes - most novels I don't highlight at all and the ones I do only have about 1-3 highlights from the whole book.Linjeakel said:Maybe they get so engrossed in the book that they forget to highlight anything? Which is how it should be, IMHO.
I can't imagine wanting to stop every two minutes to highlight something in the first place - certainly not in a novel I was reading purely for pleasure. Neither am I in the least bit interested in seeing what someone else has highlighted, so I can't tell you if the same is true in the books I've read.
I understand the need to highlight in books you're studying, but outside of that, the whole idea mystifies me.![]()
When i read this, I thought, "Good idea!" (Never used the highlight feature--shows you where my brain was...) When I wear my author hat, it does interest me to see what people choose.mom133d (aka Liz) said:When I highlight a passage, its generally in a book I'm reading for a book club and want to share.
That was my theory too. I'm always reading a bunch of e-books at the same time, and sometimes there's a couple that get left behind. (I have my Home page set up to show the most-recently read books first, so if I stop reading a book for a while, its title eventually gets buried on page 2, and then page 3...)Many people do not finish books. Thus, this is a plausible explanation.
It was a golden afternoon. The smell of the dust they kicked up was rich and satisfying; out of thick orchards on either side the road, birds called and whistled to them cheerily; good-natured wayfarers, passing them, gave them 'Good-day,' or stopped to say nice things about their beautiful cart; and rabbits, sitting at their front doors in the hedgerows, held up their fore-paws, and said, 'O my! O my! O my!'
-- from The Wind in the Willows
It was on the first of May, in the year 1769, that I resigned my domestic happiness for a time, and left my family and peaceable habitation on the Yadkin River, in North-Carolina, to wander through the wilderness of America, in quest of the country of Kentucke
-- from Life and Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone
Passports are only good for annoying honest folks, and aiding in the flight of rogues.
-- from Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days
"Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool."
-- from Rudyard Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills
I haven't noticed that - most of the popular highlights I see are philosophical.Dara England said:The main thing I've noticed about popular highlights is that they seem very random. I mean, I would think people would be highlighting amusing phrases or interesting bits of information. But there seems little rhyme or reason for the stuff I see being highlighted. It makes me wonder if people highlight by accident a lot and don't know they're doing it. Sounds like something I'd do.
It seems to me that if you start reading something and find things interesting enough to want to highlight them, that you are unlikely to simply stop reading the book. What's more likely is that you get engrossed in the story and 'forget' to highlight things. . . . . . But, then, I'm also one who pretty much never highlights so what do I know?JRTomlin said:I've never highlighted a passage in a novel I've read, which certainly doesn't mean I didn't finish them. I suspect the two are totally unrelated.![]()
Yep, it's the non-fiction books. I don't know why the fiction readers are getting haughty over not highlightingvalleycat1 said:I use the highlight or bookmark feature a LOT in nonfiction books. Usually bookmarking (which is easier), especially since I learned how to set the bookmark at the sentence that catches my eye (move the cursor to the start of that sentence, then double click the five-way). It makes it really easy to go back through the high points of a given book. For cookbooks, it's an easy way to navigate to favorite recipes; for inspirational books, an easy way to collect quotes.
I sometimes don't get the relevance of some popular highlights, so I too rarely highlight them myself.Generally I don't highlight something if it's already a popular highlight, since you can pull up a list of popular highlights. Sometimes on the random popular highlight I'll see how many people marked it, out of curiosity. I tend to use bookmark instead of highlight, since bookmarks aren't tracked & shared.
Me too, I almost wonder if I'm reading the same book, getting the same take on the topic as others.What I've found is that quite often I'm highlighting completely different spots than what the popular highlights are.