If I were to count on my fingers how many times I’ve accepted a terms & conditions agreement with zero knowledge of what that actually implies, I’d have to be an octopus. Well, maybe you can’t call suckers fingers, which would also mean tentacles aren’t arms, but is that really relevant? Was anything in that introduction of value? I’d bet, and with regard to Michelle Levy and Tom Mole’s “Introduction” from The Broadview Introduction to Book History, only a couple of those words were retained by you, the reader. In this effect (if it worked), an element of “hyperreading” is displayed which prompts the question: Why do we value the information we retain?

Readers pick and choose largely on the degree of difficulty or enjoyment they find in the writing. I mention these two together because oftentimes, they coincide. In 2018, A study using PISA found across nearly half a million 15-year-olds, “higher reading enjoyment reduces the perceived difficulty (cognitive load) of a task, which in turn improves reading achievement.” As I had prematurely assumed, a book’s readability is not lowered by a dislike of difficulty, but a preference for something more understandable. There appears to be a sweet spot of challenge and joy. For example, if I were learning Spanish, or anything really, it would be preferable to read in relation to my skill set. But that much is clear: there’s a reason I’m not enrolled in a Spanish level 500 class.

This first sentence is a big claim preceding lines of evidence and reasoning supporting said claim. The second sentence’s relevance always tends to fall in the shadow of the first’s. This is somewhat understood, and probably plays into the primary effect, which is the idea that beginnings make a more vivid and substantial impression in our mind, rather than beginnings or ends. I looked into this while investigating the “F pattern” scanning method mentioned in the text. Though it’s also understood through conditioning. In education, we’re taught the CER method. And in practicing hyperreading, why read further if the claim doesn’t intrigue you?

There is an influence from the writer on the information retained, not solely the reader. This can come in many forms, like I mentioned first, a lengthy terms & agreements section that you “scroll through” meanwhile you’re just trying to play Subway Surfers. Though I made the connection in the very sentence detailing it in the introduction. It goes, “This kind of reading seems qualitatively different from what has been described as ‘hyperreading…’ all ways in which we might read a newspaper, magazine, or website (Hayles, Broadview Reader in Book History [hereafter BRBH] 491-510.” As I’m sure you just did, I skimmed over the citation without a second thought. Even if I was intensively reading beforehand, my mind made an unconscious switch, which I believe was intentional by the author. This showcase is more explicit than sneaky tactics lurking in our media today, though it’s a clear example.

Most of what I’ve said is probably adrift from you by now. Whether you haphazardly scanned it, deemed you already knew it, or flat-out disliked it, most will fade away into your endless pile of information overload. Though maybe, for some odd reason, with nothing to do with anything I’m saying, you’ll remember an octopus.