Highlights

Because I think kids raised in the ’70s and ’80s had more freedom than the next bunch, does not mean that I dislike modern times. If it weren’t for apps and social media, I would never receive an email with a title like “Someone liked your highlight.” I’m still not 100% clear on Readmill’s purpose. It’s a reader. I mean, I have a Kindle already and now instead use the Kindle app on my iPad, so what good is another reader? Readmill does look very handsome. The social aspect where you can follow be followed is lost on me. I have decided to use the highlight feature, visible to all users, though, despite never ever highlighting of making notes in real books.

So far I’ve used it to download and read free public domain books, just two: Moby Dick because a friend liked it years ago and I respect his opinion, and Middlemarch because it’s getting a buttload of attention all of a sudden due to the new book, My Life in Middlemarch and the think pieces it’s spawning (there was even a Dorothea Brooke reference in last week’s Social Q’s column, which I would not have picked up on prior because I’ve read woefully few classics–I’ve only read 36 out of Amazon’s 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime, a list that I’m not completely on board with). I’m trying to avoid spoilers just as much as with House of Cards, a show that I’m unable to properly watch while typing at the same time because I can’t watch Netflix on my laptop because I need my laptop and hate watching TV without also doing something else.

I think the friend said Moby Dick was funny but I can’t be sure anymore (I’m also remembering that the interest also had as much to do with the idea of a bunch of men being men together in close quarters seeming kind of hot). It never seemed like a funny book and whales scare me and I’m not that interested in mid-1800s New England (or late 1800s England per Middlemarch). The writing is funny, though, hence, my highlight: “Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed.”