Most Highlighted Passages of All Time

[afv011]

According to Amazon

Pretty monotonic.

[Todd Young]

I really don't understand why people want to highlight passages at all - not unless they're writing an essay on the book.

[silasgreenback]

Only looked through the first couple pages. It is kind of interesting to think about. Most of the highlights are from The Hunger Games books. While they have been top sellers, I think it may be the younger audience that is keen to highlight like crazy whereas older readers may only be highlighting things they'd actually like to remember. The second largest group of highlighters seems to be motivational/self-help readers. A lot of conclusions to jump to on that. After that, the classics get a lots of highlights, maybe through study or people putting more energy into taking them in.

[carpetmojo]

At college, ocassionally, "The End" .......

[miguel1626]

And the most highlighted passage is "Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.", from The Hunger Games.

Wow, 17784 people feel the need to highlight such platitudes?

[rhadin]

Of more concern to me is that Amazon is able to gather these statistics and publish them. What it means is that there is no privacy. Do the terms of service give Amazon permission to analyze anything and everything a Kindler does with a Kindle e-book and publish the same? I'm surprised that there have been no angry complaints about Amazon "reading" Kindler files.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Todd Young

I really don't understand why people want to highlight passages at all - not unless they're writing an essay on the book.

Totally agree! It makes no sense whatsoever.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by rhadin

Of more concern to me is that Amazon is able to gather these statistics and publish them. What it means is that there is no privacy. Do the terms of service give Amazon permission to analyze anything and everything a Kindler does with a Kindle e-book and publish the same? I'm surprised that there have been no angry complaints about Amazon "reading" Kindler files.

Personally, I don't see it as a big deal. They already know what books I read, so who cares if they know what passages I highlight? BTW, I never highlight or annotate any book I read.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by rhadin

Of more concern to me is that Amazon is able to gather these statistics and publish them. What it means is that there is no privacy. Do the terms of service give Amazon permission to analyze anything and everything a Kindler does with a Kindle e-book and publish the same? I'm surprised that there have been no angry complaints about Amazon "reading" Kindler files.

This was my first thought as well. Makes me glad that I do not have a wi-fi e-reader.

[silasgreenback]

Originally Posted by rhadin

Of more concern to me is that Amazon is able to gather these statistics and publish them. What it means is that there is no privacy. Do the terms of service give Amazon permission to analyze anything and everything a Kindler does with a Kindle e-book and publish the same?

You can opt out of public sharing and annotation backup altogether.

[Ekaros]

So how long they have collected those? One series seems to be overpresent...

[stickybuns]

Before anybody starts panicking about Big Brother coming to get them: Sharing notes is 100% voluntary and opt-in only. If you click the "Your Books" link at the top of the page, you'll be taken to a chart where you can check the boxes on the individual books for which you are interested in sharing your notes/highlights.

[QuantumIguana]

I highlight pretty often in e-books, but never with paper books. Highlighting an e-book doesn't do any damage. I highlight when I find an interesting passage that I might want to look at again in the future. I have a copy of The Hunger Games, but I haven't read it yet. Somehow I don't think that I will be highlighting it.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Todd Young

I really don't understand why people want to highlight passages at all - not unless they're writing an essay on the book.

I always highlight typos in purchased books so I can fix them later if I feel like it.

I also occasionally highlight short funny/insightful quotes which I might want to include when I do some sort of commentary/review of the book later like in the What Are You Reading thread.

But I don't regularly highlight stuff otherwise.

[FatDog]

Two years ago when Twilight was all the rage, I was searching for some exact quotes that I vaguely remembered and found a site (I think it was "Goodquotes") that let users submit their favorites. Thousands upon thousands of quotes from "Twilight" - most of which were not meaningful or interesting - had been submitted and flooded the site.

I was annoyed by this but I could not be too upset. This meant that thousands of young people are passionate about a book and reading. Many of them will hopefully be future authors, or MobileReads members. Youthful over-enthusiasm is a problem that time usually solves.

So if tens of thousands of young people are highlighting passages from "Hunger Games" - more power to them. And I love how this statistic will screw with the data analysis that Amazon will do.