Piketty's "Capital" May Be the Most Unread Book That People Bought This Year

Note to self: "Romantic heat in the late going..." for all reports and blog posts.
From the Wall Street Journal:

The Summer's Most Unread Book Is…
A simple index drawn from e-books shows which best sellers are going unread (we're looking at you, Piketty).

Has anyone made it past page 26 of Piketty? iStockphoto/Getty Images

It's beach time, and you've probably already scanned a hundred lists of summer reads. Sadly overlooked is that other crucial literary category: the summer non-read, the book that you pick up, all full of ambition, at the beginning of June and put away, the bookmark now and forever halfway through chapter 1, on Labor Day. The classic of this genre is Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time," widely called "the most unread book of all time."

How can we find today's greatest non-reads? Amazon's "Popular Highlights" feature provides one quick and dirty measure. 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 the length of the book. If nobody has made it past the introduction, the popular highlights will be clustered at the beginning.

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. (Disclaimer: This is not remotely scientific and is for entertainment purposes only!) Here's how some current best sellers and classics weigh in, from highest HI to lowest:

"The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt : 98.5%
This seems like exactly the kind of long, impressive literary novel that people would carry around ostentatiously for a while and never finish. But it's just the opposite. All five top highlights come from the final 20 pages, where the narrative falls away and Ms. Tartt spells out her themes in a cascade of ringing, straight-out assertions. 

"Catching Fire" by Suzanne Collins : 43.4%
Another novel that gets read all the way through. "Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them" is the most highlighted sentence in the seven-year history of Kindle, marked by 28,703 readers. Romantic heat in the late going also helps to produce a high score.

.......................

"Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman : 6.8%
Apparently the reading was more slow than fast. To be fair, Prof. Kahneman's book, the summation of a life's work at the forefront of cognitive psychology, is more than twice as long as "Lean In," so his score probably represents just as much total reading as Ms. Sandberg's does. 

"A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking: 6.6%
The original avatar backs up its reputation pretty well. But it's outpaced by one more recent entrant—which brings us to our champion, the most unread book of this year (and perhaps any other). Ladies and gentlemen, I present:

"Capital in the Twenty-First Century" by Thomas Piketty : 2.4%
Yes, it came out just three months ago. But the contest isn't even close. Mr. Piketty's book is almost 700 pages long, and the last of the top five popular highlights appears on page 26. Stephen Hawking is off the hook; from now on, this measure should be known as the Piketty Index....

...MORE 

Hmmm..., how can I use "Romantic heat in the late going..."?
Anna Karenina and solar:

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.” 

Brokeback Mountain on natural gas:

“I wish I knew how to quit you.”

Lady Chatterley's Lover on time and valuation:

“All hopes of eternity and all gain from the past he would have given to have her there, to be wrapped warm with him in one blanket, and sleep, only sleep...."

Love in the Time of Cholera on core investments:

"I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love."

Schmoozing the new compliance guy:

“I want everyone to meet you. You're my favorite person of all time.” 
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

Gone with the Wind on the senior partners:

"You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.”