Knowing Other People’s Highlights
Looping back to this because I saw it again and forgot to talk about it the first time (and I’m very curious what other people think). Modern Mrs. Darcy commented that books are coming pre-highlighted. (Scroll down to #7 on her list.) As in the publisher is telling you what you’re going to want to notice while you’re reading.
I hate this idea.
I don’t even like how Kindle tells you how other people have underlined something. I don’t want to know what other people think before I’ve gotten a chance to think about what I think. I don’t want to know what they consider to be the most important sentences to note while reading the text. I’ve turned off popular highlights and notes.
And then I realize that I do this by bolding words or italicizing them to draw your attention to it. I’ve become what I despise!
I’ve yet to see a paper book come pre-highlighted, but it would be enough to make me rethink the purchase.
What do you think? Are you for or against pre-highlighted (or knowing popular highlights) in books?*
* See, I just did it again.
11 comments
Ya know how Medium articles show you the most copied parts? That irritates me. If I want to know what other people think about an article, I’ll ask them! Same goes for books…
LOL my mom highlights and underlines all over her books, so as a kid if I picked up a book she’d been reading, I had this experience. I hated it. I don’t usually underline in any book I like, because I want it to be pristine. If a book is annoying me though I will sometimes start interacting with it aggressively with marginalia.
I think it’s an awful idea to include other people’s highlights. Feels like it’s making the experience less about the book and more about other people. Nothing wrong with other people but some things it’s ok to experience alone, imo.
So I wouldn’t buy a book that had highlights, because isn’t part of the reading experience finding out what stands out to YOU?? That would take me out of the action, and I feel like I would miss stuff because I was so concentrated on what was highlighted that must be so important.
Using those techniques in your blog post writing is different, because you are writing about an idea and you are trying to convey to us why you came to that conclusion.
I’m mixed on this, and really, blog comments aren’t much different from certain types of marginalia.
While I don’t like my reading interrupted, I can usually ignore the notes in the margins when I need to. That said, I am sometimes super intrigued with others thought about the same text… Finding an old book with its previous reader’s notes is sort of like finding someone’s old hand-written love letter…
No. No. No. I can remember when I’d select used books in college painstakingly looking through all the choices for the LEAST highlighted one because I wanted to highlight it MYSELF! LOL So, no, I’d never buy a pre-highlighted book. I think it’s different when an author selects words to bold, or italicize- at least it is to me, but when I ‘m reading I want the reader’s experience to be mine if that makes sense.
Chris beat me to the textbook observation. I actually got to the point that I would look for used books that were completely highlighted in order to avoid confusion.
But no to highlighting if possible.
Charlotte has the same observation I have. I care less what others think (but I do like having the option of checking it out) than I care about what the author thinks. Bolding/italicizing your own writing is an expression of your own writing.
Pre-highlighted books? I thought you were talking about buying used college text books. Those I expected to be pre-highlighted. But highlighting done by the publisher? Hard no! I don’t want the distraction and I want to see what I’m drawn to. Is this a ‘kids these days’ moment?
I was checking my Kindle settings the other day and saw that this was an option. I swiftly made sure it was set to off.
You’re allowed to do it though, as it isn’t the same. Your blog is commentary. We come to your blog for commentary, not the raw material. We read raw material, without highlights, to … well … think!
I preferred buying new textbooks (even though they were cheaper used) for this reason — I much preferred to add in my own highlighting. I had an English prof whose favourite book was “Middlemarch”– his copy was highlighted in all different colours, each colour representing a different time he’d read/taught the novel (& this wasn’t his first copy either!). I thought that was cool. 🙂 I agree with Charlotte and the others that it’s a bit different in blogging.
I had no idea you could turn off the “popular highlights” function! It annoys me, because often they aren’t things I would have highlighted and it’s a distraction. I agree with others that you highlighting/holding/italicizing things as an author is different than other readers’ highlights, because I WANT an author to share with me what they find important in their writing it how to emphasize when reading. It’s part of their voice, I think. So yeah, I hate the idea of a pre-highlighted book. I want the reading to be a mental discussion between me and the author, not the publisher (or zillions of other readers… That’s what book club is for).