That moment I realized I was highlighting the book instead of reading it

At our Tuesday meeting for The Night Circus, someone quoted a line I'd highlighted twice, and I couldn't remember the scene at all, so now I'm wondering if anyone else has caught themselves decorating pages instead of actually taking in the words, and if so, what tipped you off first?

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1 Comment

riverwhite17d ago

Ugh, SAME. I caught myself doing that with a non fiction book about habits, and I literally couldn't tell you one thing I "read" from that chapter. It hit me when I went to look back for a quote to share with my friend and realized I had no clue what the whole section was about. Honestly, it feels like the same thing that happens when I scroll through my phone while the TV is on, you're absorbing the motion and colors but not the actual story. Highlighting gives us this fake sense of doing something productive, when really we're just playing with a digital crayon. It's like our brains are so used to multitasking that we forgot how to just sit with one thing.