Evening Must-Read: Jordan Ellenberg: The Summer’s Most Unread Book Is…

Jordan Ellenberg: The Summer’s Most Unread Book Is…: “Every book’s Kindle page lists…

…the five passages most highlighted by readers. If every reader is getting to the end, those highlights could be scattered throughout…. Thus, the Hawking Index (HI): Take the page numbers of a book’s five top highlights, average them, and divide by the number of pages in the whole book. The higher the number, the more of the book we’re guessing most people are likely to have read…. “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt: 98.5%…. “Catching Fire” by Suzanne Collins : 43.4%…. “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald : 28.3%…. “Fifty Shades of Grey” by E.L. James: 25.9%…. “Flash Boys” by Michael Lewis : 21.7%…. “Lean In” by Sheryl Sandberg : 12.3%…. “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman : 6.8%…. “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking: 6.6%…. “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by Thomas Piketty : 2.4%…. Mr. Piketty’s book is almost 700 pages long, and the last of the top five popular highlights appears on page 26…