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One Sci-Fi Author Wrote 29 of the Kindle's 100 Most-Highlighted Passages
An anonymous reader writes "Today Amazon announced that a science fiction writer has become the Kindle's all-time best-selling author. Last June Suzanne Collins, who wrote the Hunger Games trilogy, was only the fourth author to sell one million ebooks, but this month Amazon announced she'd overtaken all her competition (and she also wrote the #1 and #2 best-selling ebooks this Christmas). In fact, 29 of the 100 most-highlighted passages on the Kindle were written by Collins, including 7 of the top 10. And on a separate list of recent highlights, Collins has written 17 of the top 20 most-highlighted passages."
It's pretty interesting to go through the top-100 list and look at the passages people think are worth highlighting. Taken out of context, many of them could be patched together and re-sold as a self-help book. None are quite so eloquent as #18 in the recent highlights.
Crap. I wasn't logged in. My comment. Great book for those interested. Kind of like The Running Man, but in many ways, much crueler.
Crap. I wasn't logged in. My comment. Great book for those interested. Kind of like The Running Man, but in many ways, much crueler.
And a complete rip-off of Battle Royale. Skip it and just watch that instead.
It's a recent publication that is required reading in a lot of schools. Of course a lot of it is highlighted, those are the answers to the tests.
Gee, how shocking. A book which is getting a lot of advertising push in the run-up to a movie release just happens to be getting highlighted in an Amazon bookstore function designed to let you see what's popular. Gosh, I guess it must just be practically scientifically, objectively the most read book right now. You should probably buy it and check it out!
How else did you think they let you see passages that other people have highlighted?
Home -> Settings -> Popular Highlights -> Turn Off
Are you trolling?
If you have a Kindle, it's dead obvious they do this.
As soon as I started reading on my Kindle, I noticed underlines on things. Amazon shows you the most popular things to highlight in the books you read, and tells you that. It's one of the features of the Kindle (I turned it off, as I found it distracting).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Which #18 is the summary referring to?
"Press and hold, then drag your finger across text to select it. A dialog box will appear that lets you highlight the text, add a note, and so on. If several other Kindle users have highlighted a particular passage in the book you are reading, you will see that passage underlined. You can turn off these Popular Highlights in Settings. Notes appear as superscripted numbers within the text. To view a note the next time you visit that page, simply tap on the number."
or
"“Panem et Circenses translates into ‘Bread and Circuses.’ The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.”"?
They're both oddly appropriate for self-help...
I agree. I needed something to read early last summer. Based on hearing about it from a friend or two and all the promotion, I decided to give it a try. I was quite pleasantly surprised by the three books.
I'm interested in seeing the movie. Some of the bits in the trailers look great to me, although I imagined District 12's town to be less rural and the fence more imposing. I agree that PG-13 is going to be an interesting challenge. Given it's a book in which, just based on the jacket, you know 23 kids should die means they're going to have to deal with violence issues. Of course there is no way they could make it R, it would cut out the movie's target audience.
The movie has a big enough budget that they certainly should be able to do a good job. I hope it at least turns out decent.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
That was my first reaction, though I've seen plenty of entertaining books inspired by others. Has anybody that's read both Battle Royale [novel] and Hunger Games care to comment?
When you highlight a passage, you have the option to share it. When you're reading, you'll see highlights that other people shared as dotted line underlines, along with a number indicating how many people shared that bit. You can turn off the display of shared highlights in the menu. Anyone who owns a Kindle would know that, so I suspect you're lying when you insinuate that you're a Kindle owner. Most likely a shill/fanboi for some other company.
Speaking of dumb shit: it's `they're,' not `their'
Violence is OK. They just have to keep sex out of it.
'The Gun is good. The penis is evil'
(Anybody remember Zardoz? You do? I'm very sorry.)
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Interestingly, the Hunger Games series is one of the few on Amazon that is significantly cheaper on the Kindle (and apps) then the paper version. And for some bizarre reason, they're the only Kindle books that I've seen that aren't plastered with typos.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Astro-turf. Pop culture feel good quotes, coming to a theater near you, and and mindless platitudes. The Harry Potter star-maker machinery is at work again, I see.
'bloomers' for the win. Ben Franklin would have loved that, the ol' whore monger.
The Kindle Reader app does not make the ability to disable this visible or obvious.
It's also not visible or obvious on all versions of the Kindle.
I think you need to go take a better look at the software on the different Kindle models.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
Uh, since you apparently found the Constitution to be TL:DR, allow me to point out something: the Constitution limits the actions of the Federal Government. Amazon may be near-omnipresent, but they're NOT the Feds. The operative document is your Kindle User Agreement, which, no doubt, you clicked through because it, too, was TL:DR. Lesson is, read the agreement, for that which the Large Print giveth, the Small Print usually taketh away....
Seeing what statistically significant humans think is highlight-worthy is incredibly depressing. Is it any wonder the One Percent can manage to stay in control? Humans have opposable thumbs and can manage language, but wise they aren't. They can't discern platitudes and doublespeak from actual wisdom.
As the relieved father of a young woman who has finally made it into her twenties, I am keen to read some books where awful stuff happens to teenagers.
Especially goths. Does anyone know if these books have awful stuff happening to goths? Oh, and horny teenage boys who are always hanging around. I could do with a book about awful stuff happening to horny teenage boys with adams apples and their parents' cars who are always hanging around trying to get daughters to go to parties at the homes of absent parents. That could be very entertaining. Dismemberment, maybe brutal beatings with baseball bats, like that. I may have to check out these books.
Hey, they're making a movie of this Hunger Games stuff, right?
You are welcome on my lawn.
From my own highlight list:
How much of old material goes to make up the freshest novelty of human life.
--Nathaniel Hawthorne, House of the Seven Gables (1851)
anyone? doubtful. most? also doubtful.
amazon tracking and collecting this sort of data is not any different than tivo and cable companies doing the same with dvr's (and not any less spooky), what programs are recorded and watched, when they're watched, what parts get replayed, skipped-over or paused on. and like tivo, amazon defaults to opt-in instead of opt-out (which is not exactly convenient to do with tivo.. and near or completely impossible with cable company boxes). tivo took a lot of heat after that most unfortunate of superbowl half-time performances -- amazon should here as well.
spying? please.
you VOLUNTARILY gave them your name and billing address when you ordered the damn thing.
Have you read it? Good literature is good regardless of your age, and despite my initial doubts, this trilogy is actually good literature.
Oh, I survived it, but I think it permanently scarred me.
Sean Connery in a pink diaper with suspenders - one of those horrid images that pop into my consciousness at inappropriate moments.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Sean Connery in a pink diaper with suspenders - one of those horrid images that pop into my consciousness at inappropriate moments.
Legend has it that Connery was concerned that he would be forever shoehorned in the "suave spy" role of his James Bond movies and used Zardoz to shatter that stereotype utterly. I also imagine it was a lot more fun to be in the movie than to watch it.
It's much better to see kids die horrible deaths than to hear the F word a few times. (see the controversy over the R rating for "Bully")
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
One can find the origin of these rather shallow "deep thoughts" in much older literature. The requirement is just a little knowledge. E.g. the first on the "recent list" is a seriously dumbed-down Faust:
When I say to the Moment flying;
'Linger a while -- thou art so fair!'
And so on.
Yeah, I'm not generally a highlighting person. It has it's place, and if I was reading some reference book it might be nice. But when I'm reading fiction I'm not interested in finding out what sentences 8500 other people think are poignant.
Amazon did a good job with it. And having turned off other people's highlights, I can still put my own in (even though I don't).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Don't worry, no one here is impressed with your intellect. You're free to read something purely for enjoyment.
Which was a rip-off of some Star Trek episode or Asimov story.
No new ideas in the hopper.
Don't bother (or do, if you must). These books exploit the stupidity, the covardice of the masses revelling in violence because they are afraid of a society without it. Throw some 'wisdom' into it to give the text a resemblance of an intellectual edge and 95% of the rest can be violence, latent or explicit, which is what they understand, what they think they can manage. These poor excuses for a human being are the same who love the crap of Ayn Rand, or think The art of war or The prince are the pinnacles of human wisdom. Kierkegaard noted that men die for freedom of speech but happily forgo freedom of thought. Let them suffer if they cannot stand social pressure. I think everyone can agree on the effect time has on this garbage: not quite the same as it has on Aristotle, Democrit, Schopenhauer or -to name a contemporary- Einstein. But let the poor souls have their armchair violence, anything to appease the mildly horrifying feeling of having to be alive.
Hmm, haven't noticed that on the books I have on my Kindle. Of course, I have books on Iraq, Afghanistan, and scholarly books like the sinking of the Biskmarck and the Wehrmacht on the Western Front. So, guess the books I read just arent all that popular.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
There's a very well-made (10 mins) fan movie of the Hunger Games that happened 24 years earlier than the one in the book (and the upcoming movie). No spoilers are included for the book and it will give you a great idea of what to expect. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mUjssn86h4
The highlighted text:
The New Oxford American Dictionary Contents About this book
Truly inspiring
What an asshole you are. You make up your own cultural norms by presumably abstracting from your personal experiences and then you passionately insult anyone who doesn't follow the limited views that result.
Norm 1: people read books to be "enriched" by them as efficiently as possible ("Why go through all the trouble reading the Harry Potter or Hunger Games series when you could read Dr. Seuss's books and become three times as enriched in a fraction of the time?"). This is patently ridiculous. Books can be enriching, but they can also be guilty pleasures, pure entertainment, sleep-inducing material, or a host of other things. Moreover, books are different things to different people. Your own view of a book will probably not be very universal, and that's not a bad thing.
Norm 2: an "adult or literate high-school upperclassman" should not promote a children's or young adult's ("Dick and Jane") series. Screw you; I'll recommend The Hobbit or Harry Potter or whatever I think is appropriate for whatever reason I feel like to whomever I wish. You're in no position to pre-judge the quality of my reasons in such a hypothetical case you judgmental prick. You're similarly in no position to judge the value of everyone's reasons for reading a particular book.
You do have some good points--calling Twilight "good literature" is pretty silly using the usual definition of "literature"; most people on /. are literate adults; and Dr. Seuss' books are remarkably enriching, especially to the young. Your good points are buried in crap and shrouded in assholery today, though.
Crap. I wasn't logged in. My comment. Great book for those interested. Kind of like The Running Man, but in many ways, much crueler.
And a complete rip-off of Battle Royale. Skip it and just watch that instead.
And all of the above got the idea from Robert Scheckley's 1958 short story "The Prize of Peril", which is not only the first depiction of this type of game, but also of any form of reality television in fiction, decades before it materialized in the real world. I have not read the hunger games, but I wonder how much all of these add to the original concept...
That read the first book and thought "Really?? This is what all the excitement is about?" I didn't care for Hunger Games at all. It was an engaging read admittedly. I kept turning the pages. But the foreshadowing of where things were headed seemed pretty shallow to me (no, I did not cheat and peek at the ending). My closing thoughts were "well, someone's hoping to cash in on a screenplay here" and a sort of dirty feeling. I felt like one feels when you slow down at the sight of a roadside accident to see if there's anything gory.
I read the next two books just to see if it would get any good.
I have this vague sense of irony about the whole thing. As I listen to people tell me why they just like this book so much, some times I feel like a big part of the reason they liked it was because everyone else seems to as well. It's cool, because if you're read it, you're in the club. And the club says it's good. Given that a major theme of the book is humanity's ability as a collective to ignore stuff that is wrong, this seems hugely ironic to me.
If you enjoyed it, no offense meant. I respect that. To each his own. I liked the Mistborn series and Terry Pratchett novels far better than this among recent reads, and maybe you don't care for those.
Am I the only person that didn't care for Hunger Games at all?
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
That was my first reaction, though I've seen plenty of entertaining books inspired by others. Has anybody that's read both Battle Royale [novel] and Hunger Games care to comment?
I doubt there is a great overlap of audiences. The Hunger Games readers are, in my judgment, going to be Potterheads, not weaboos.
Some of them might be old enough to have seen Schwarzenegger in The Running Man, but fewer will have read the book or have seen Series 7: The Contenders. And like with any fad, the majority will think it's new and groundbreaking.
As long as it gets kids to read, I won't complain. Perhaps they'll pick up some other books later, and one day develop critical thinking.
Both books were completely different.
As opposed to only one of them being completely different? Yes, I can believe you're a Hunger Games fan with that feat of logic.
The two are as similar as "Ca Plane Pour Moi" and "Jet Boy, Jet Girl". That is, they're indistinguishable for an outsider, but different for those who are fans. But when you boil away the fat, the exact same riff or plot remains.
i've read battle royale 2 or 3 times and seen the film, and the hunger game trilogy. they have a number of striking similarities in events, situations, and themes, (of which i won't get into due to spoiler concerns) but are stylistically quite different. hunger games is more informed by celebrity culture and reality tv, and written for a young teen audience, battle royale is japanese pulp written for adults and gets more cerebral among a wider variety characters. hunger games is larger in scope then battle royale. running man, truman show, lord of the flies all sorta come from this tradition too, and share themes and situations as well. i enjoyed them both, found they were written competently and had fun, i wouldn't mistake either for high literature though
nobody's perfect
If there was any doubt that The Hunger Games are young adult novels, just read through the list.
I'd weep for the youth of today but I was a youth of yesterday and I was a giant idiot too. I mostly grew out of it. They will too. It's how it works.
As the relieved father of a young woman who has finally made it into her twenties
I could do with a book about awful stuff happening to horny teenage boys with adams apples and their parents' cars who are always hanging around trying to get daughters to go to parties at the homes of absent parents.
I may have to check out these books.
People say the same about Harry Potter and Twilight. Those people should be smacked in their mouths with a rolled-up newspaper.
You got modded troll, but you're right.
People don't feel this way about Twilight because of the quality writing.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Not really sure that you need to resort to conspiracy theories - the book is crazy popular right now; and yes, partly because of the massive advertising push for the movie (then again, it's getting a movie because it's crazy popular).
If they did this 3 years ago, it'd be full of Twilight nonsense.
sic transit gloria mundi
This article came at a fitting time as I had recently picked up the bad habit of writing. It's a peculiar problem I have; it sneaks up from time to time, usually as the result of a new gadget which had the misfortune of including a keyboard. The impulse afflicts me for a few days or weeks until I finally convince myself, in no uncertain terms, that I am really a irredeemably terrible writer and should, in a just universe, have long ago been issued a restraining order against the whole of the English language. As this is, alas, an entirely unjust universe, over the years I have left a terrifying path of half-finished video game plots, reimagined TV shows and fan-fics in my wake.
But I digress. When I stumbled upon this article I thought that it would be my rescue, as my recent purchase of a Bluetooth keyboard for my smartphone had me again fancying myself an auteur while the tiny rational part of by brain helplessly fought the controls. While I had never read any of Suzanne Collins work, surely anyone capable of penning a third of Amazon's top quotes must have a rapier wit and a stunning insight into the human condition. It would be a delightful chance to reaffirm my own incompetence and move on with my life. And I'd even get a new collection of bon mots to use at the water cooler. What could possibly go wrong?
Oops, I'm starting to digress again and souls don't crush themselves, after all! Bring on the quotes!
Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.
Ah, well, that's...very true. Very applicable to lots of...things.
It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.
That's true, too! I've heard the same message plenty of times before, but that doesn't make it less insightful.
“I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever,” he says.
Okay, maybe a bit trite, but still a nice sentiment.
“I just want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you,” Peeta replies.
Ah...um, okay, now my secret My Little Pony fan-fic is starting to look good. Uh...moving on...
We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.
...Dear...
“Having an eye for beauty isn’t the same thing as a weakness,” Peeta points out. “Except possibly when it comes to you.”
...God...
Life in District 12 isn’t really so different from life in the arena. At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever wants you dead.
...this...
The berries. I realize the answer to who I am lies in that handful of poisonous fruit. If I held them out to save Peeta because I knew I would be shunned if I came back without him, then I am despicable. If I held them out because I loved him, I am still self-centered, although forgivable. But if I held them out to defy the Capitol, I am someone of worth. The trouble is, I don’t know exactly what was going on inside me at that moment.
...is...
I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.
...all...
“District Twelve. Where you can starve to death in safety,”
...complete...
That what I need to survive is not Gale’s fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
How do you know if someone has read Schopenhauer? Don't worry, they'll tell you.
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
I find http://reasoningwithvampires.tumblr.com/">this to be a pretty good analysis of just how bad the writing is. My wife is a librarian at a middle school here in Virginia, and she makes a point to keep up with popular fiction for middle-schoolers. She said that while the writing is awful, some of it was actually really good, but most of it was just padding.
We watched the first 3 movies together... well, at least sat in front of them while surfing on our laptops. I couldn't even get through the first one _with_ Rifftrax. The second and third were a little better; there was at least some decent action to break it up. But I just cannot understand being excited about a story where the main character's motivations are so illogical the only reasonable conclusion is that she's mentally ill... but the way it's portrayed I don't even think the author sees it that way. Plus Kristin Stewart is pretty, but she always looks like she's strong out on Quaaludes or something. She seems to only have two emotions: dull petulance and vacant infatuation. Sparkly boy is just pasty and creepy. At least Jacob had some redeeming qualities and doesn't look like someone who would sit around drinking absinthe and quoting Shelly purely for effect.
Meh. If I'm going to watch girl stuff, I'll stick with Jane Austen adaptations. The "Pride and Prejudice" with Colin Perth is really good. Superb production, acting, and music. My wife watches it about once every couple months or so. I mean, yeah, I'd rather be watching something like "Burn Notice", but I can appreciate stuff based on "real" literature. "Twilight" will be nothing but a historical footnote in a few decades while people will still be making new adaptations of Austen.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I have seen battle royale 1 and read 2.7 of the hunger games books, there are a lot of similarities, but I think hunger games is much more reallistic, in the sense of depicting a society the has actually happened before, and could happen again.
Although I would guess that there are or have been recently a few lunatic groups doing stuff like battle royale too, so that would be pretty realistic too, but kind of different
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
Her house brooded behind partially trimmed hedges, an island of shadow under willow trees. Ryan Davenport, 18, shuddered as the sun passed behind a cloud. Sophia was in there. His Adams' apple bobbed as he swallowed, unease shadowing his handsome face.
His mind was made up. It was time to meet the parents.
The drone of unseen hedge trimmers somewhere nearby dulled his roiling mind. "Keep it together, R-dawg. Keep it together." Breathing slowly wasn't working. His pounding heart moved oxygen-deprived blood through even the most engorged of organs. Images of Sophia's svelte form flickered in his minds' eye, and he gasped for breath. Soon.
One step, then another. Through the hedge gate, into the shadow of the trees. He seemed to float towards the door. He was going to do it. As Ryan reached for the bell, a deeper shadow fell. The hedge trimmer had fallen silent.
He tried to turn, but it was too late.
At the scream of suddenly-right-behind-him electric trimmer, Ryan froze. His vision blurred and his head was whipped back and forth in a motion that reminded him of the paint-can shaker at the hardware store. There was a curious ripping sound. Tatters of bloody ear whacked warm, sticky tracers across his face, again and again.
"I told you never to come back here, you horny bastard." said the shadow, raising the now-dripping trimmer. Ryan staggered away. Sophie's naked form receded from his mind. He couldn't speak. The world outside the hedge gleamed in late afternoon sunlight, beckoning, beckoning. Unattainable.
A blow fell, and Ryan fell with it.
Sometimes I think in our eagerness to pass judgments on books, we neglect to actually *read* them. At least not with real critical objectivity.
When *Twilight* became a phenomenon I bought a copy and did my best to read it with enjoyment. While it was not *my* cup of tea, I think I saw why fans feel it's special. It's not just the obvious reasons; it's clear to me that Stephanie Meyers is actually quite a talented writer. What she's not is a *skillful* writer, at least at the time she wrote tha book. *Twilight*'s dialog meanders painfully and its characters are wish-fulfillment automatons who lack nuance and surprise; but *Twilight* also contains flashes of quite good writing that you'd miss if you were skimming it solely to find material to pillory it with. These flashes of talent are what earn the book its fans, despite its flaws.
We all tend to overlook faults in books we love, but all books have them. So I don't feel the need to prove to people who love this book that they're contemptible for doing so. In fact I don't see the point.
Frankly, the mania for correcting the mistakes of others, even when those "mistakes" have no conceivable bearing on us, strikes me as a kind of mental illness. Evidently it's a common form of insanity.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
There's nothing so sad and useless as an English Literature major. What did you really think you were going to do after four years? Tell people how great Schopenhauer is while you bag their groceries?
A lot of English Literature majors go on to work in Finance and earn considerably more than most scientists, if that's how you want to measure success. This is ignoring the fact that studying literature is something all educated people should do for pleasure anyway.
If you think a university education is just glorified job training, I really do feel sorry for you.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it