Amazon is now aggregating the data from the “highlighting” feature on the Kindle to find out what text is highlighted the most across all Kindle users. Amazon is calling the feature “Most Highlighted Passages of All Time” and the results couldn’t be more boring. (via)
Kindle Highlights and Lowlights
Harlequin History
"How did a humble Canadian publisher—which got its start reprinting other companys' books—become the name most associated with romance? It's a long story, involving a peripatetic former fur trader and his opinionated socialite wife, a Procter-and-Gamble-trained Harvard MBA, some jilted Americans and a whole crowd of damned scribbling women." From Pictorial comes the story of "How Harlequin Became the Most Famous Name in Romance."
Innovations in Multi-Tasking
The "Laptop Steering Wheel Desk" seems like a really bad idea. Then again, better that anyone inclined to use a computer while driving have a desk to put it on.
The High Price
Recommended Reading: On Patricia Highsmith, Carol, and being the queer daughter of a queer mother: "I am doomed to die an ugly death or at least to be separated from my partner, probably violently. So is my queer mother and my partner and my cousin and many of my friends. We are all doomed, it seems, because this is the only story American media tells about queer women."
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You are Muriel Spark
"The voices you hear when you sit down to write lead you to believe that you’re a character in the novel you’re writing even though metafiction hasn’t been invented yet." If this applies to you, you might be in a Muriel Spark novel according to Maud Newton's article at The Toast. We aren't surprised that Newton wrote this because Spark made her 2010 Year in Reading post.
Hemingway’s Bullfights Aren’t What They’re Cracked Up to Be
“Eric Nusbaum went to a bullfight in Mexico City, and, among other things, he realized Ernest Hemingway was totally wrong.”
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This feature is ON by default and I just found out today by accident. I was in the middle of a page, and there it was suddenly staring at me: a highlighted paragraph. I thought my device had gone nuts!
If I wanted a highlighted, commented book I would buy a used book in poor condition. Now, why would I want to recreate that experience on my Kindle?
Not only are these highlights an obnoxious distraction, but they can also serve as spoilers. Amazon should give you the option of enabling highlights when you start reading, instead of assuming everyone loves marked and commented books. I hate it when people highlight library books and now I have to put up with it on my e-books?
It took me several minutes to find out how to turn it off, but in the brief time it was active, this feature interfered with my reading: I had to stop, go online, read half a dozen articles about this topic where the only concern was people worried about their privacy, and by then my reading time was up.