I’ve got that nifty feature turned on where you can what other people have highlighted in stories on your Kindle. I don’t know what, exactly, I’m hoping to know about with the highlighting, but it fascinates me.
See, if one person highlights a section, maybe it won’t tell me about that. But if 12 people highlight an area? Then I find out that I have NO CLUE WHY THEY DECIDED TO HIGHLIGHT THAT SENTENCE. None. Whatsoever.
I’m reading “Dead Lawyers Don’t Lie” by Mark Nolan. The story is bumping alone, and then boom, here’s a gem highlighted by 12 people: “Ivan Zhukov is one of the most respected and feared killers in the world.”
That is a statement in the middle of the statement by someone. Nothing else is highlighted, just that sentence. Why? Why highlight that sentence, instead of the other ones that might be pontification or erudition about whatever piques the interest of the author?
I oft run into highlighters who highlight a part of a character description. Why? You highlight so you can go back to it later and it’s significant in some way to the reader. Every so often, highlighters nail some bon mot that an author is pontificating about, and those I get, but character descriptions is weird.
Author Matt Bowes and the Dog's Breakfast 
That’s really interesting! I don’t think I would use it on a regular reading book, but it might be fun for something “educational.”
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That’s why I’m curious — who highlights a fiction book?
I’m OCD about spelling, errors, and the like, so I’ll highlight those as I go through with the intention of sending the author the list of stuff (assuming they care, some don’t), but I’ve never seen the underlining saying “19 people highlighted this” on any typo. It’s almost always a bromide of some kind, like “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” though more often it’s one line about character: “His jaw, like Balaam’s ass, couldn’t stop speaking, even when people really wanted him to just move along.”
And the candidates for highlighting seem so random. Do people highlight something that someone else highlighted because someone else highlighted it?
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