Commonplacing the public domain: Reading the classics socially on the Kindle

Abstract

Amazon leads the market in ebooks with the Kindle brand, which encompasses a range of dedicated e-reader devices and a large ebook store. Kindle users are able to share the experience of reading ebooks purchased from Amazon by selecting passages of text for upload to the Kindle Popular Highlights website. In this article, I propose that the Kindle Popular Highlights database contains evidence that readers are re-appropriating commonplacing -the act of selecting important passages from a text and recording them in a separate location for later re-use -while reading public domain titles on theKindle. An analysis of keyness in a corpus of 34,044 shared highlights from public domain titles suggests that readers focus on words relating to philosophy and values to draw an understanding of contemporary society from these classic works. This form of highlighting takes precedent over understanding and sharing key narrative moments.An examination of the top ten most popular authors in the corpus, and case studies of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and William Shakespeare's Hamlet, demonstrates variation in highlighting practice as readers are choosing to shorten famous commonplaces in order to change their context for an audience that extends beyond the original reader. Through this analysis, I propose that Kindle users' highlighting patterns are shaped by the behaviour of other readers and reflect a shared understanding of an audience beyond the initial highlighter.

Wattpad as a resource for literary studies. Quantitative and qualitative examples of the importance of digital social reading and readers’ comments in the margins

“…related to suspense, curiosity, or surprise effects [109]. This is in line with one of the main functions of highlighting, as shown by Rowberry [110] on a corpus of Kindle Popular Highlights: users highlight pivotal narrative moments. However, in highly commented paragraphs there is no trace of the commonplaces identified by Rowberry: moral values do not spark many discussions among Wattpad readers, although this might be due to genre-specific limitations of our corpus or to the readers' young age.…”

“…For Classics, it is interesting to note that commenting on Wattpad is different than highlighting on a Kindle e-readers. In the latter case, Rowberry [110] has shown that readers focus on "perceived wisdom" and "affective climaxes of a narrative". We have shown that the most commented paragraphs on Wattpad display more basic narrative effects-suspense, curiosity and surprise-not necessarily related to emotionally intense scenes.…”

Activities to Anticipate the Weaknesses of Students’ Reading Materials From Internet

“…It shows that Internet affects reading. For the discussion, the readers can "share the quotation" (Rowberry, 2016) or "construct narrative or argument". In Indonesia, a research that was conducted by Son et al (2011) reports that Indonesian teachers' computer literacy and typing skills level are adequate or higher.…”

Trends in E-book Research

“…The author predicts that this will increase e-book acceptance rate in India. Rowberry 75 observed that the Kindle Popular Highlights database contains evidence that readers are re-appropriating common placing i.e. the act of selecting important passages from a text and recording them in a separate location for later re-use, while reading public domain titles on the Kindle.…”