1. Reading A Life Through Books
Abstract
We are exploring how to visualize the books that an
reads to facilitate self-reflection on this aspect of their
life history, as well as enabling them to share the data
with others, such as family members. We are interested
in long term book reading patterns and briefly describe
how we have visualized and evaluated a unique dataset
that records every book read by an individual over a 50
year period.
Author Keywords
Personal informatics; books; reading patterns.
ACM Classification Keywords
H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g.,
HCI): Miscellaneous.
Introduction
When Oscar Wilde was imprisoned his possessions were
auctioned off to pay legal costs and he stated that
losing his books was “the one of all my material losses
the most distressing to me” [10, p.37]. Thomas Wright
[OB] wrote a biography of Wilde based on the inventory
of the celebrated author’s personal library of around
2000 books. Wright argues that, “he regarded books as
his ‘friends’, and his collection as both a record of his
life and an emblem of his personality”, the most
important ones being referred to as his ‘golden books’
[11, p.3]. This argument is supported by evidence that
reading plays an important role in personal
development and can lead to a greater insight into
oneself and, more generally, human nature and
decision making [1].
It is not just literary figures who highly value books: in
the UK reading is one of the most popular pastimes [9]
and it is estimated that 65% of adults regularly read for
pleasure, defined as, “reading that we do of our own
free will anticipating the satisfaction that we will get
from the act of reading” [4, p.5]. There are many
benefits associated with reading for pleasure, including
personal development, professional success, health and
wellbeing, and educational achievement [7]. For
example, there is evidence that reading for pleasure is
a more important factor in children’s educational
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Alice Pagano
City University London
London, EC1V 0HB
Alice.Pagano.1@city.ac.uk
Jon Bird
City University London
London, EC1V 0HB
jon.bird@city.ac.uk

2. success than their socio-economic background [6] and
is also a key factor in cognitive development [8].
Although typically considered a solitary activity, there
are important social aspects to reading, and a key
determinant of whether children become regular
readers is whether their parents read [3]. The
popularity of book clubs where people meet regularly to
discuss books also demonstrates that reading is often a
social activity, with an estimated 50,000 in the UK [5].
More generally, there is evidence that reading for
pleasure increases community participation [2].
Our research focus is on exploring how an individual’s
long term book reading data can be visualized in
engaging and informative ways that facilitate self-
reflection on this ‘record of their life’, as well as
enabling them to share the data with others, such as
family members and friends. We are interested in how
book reading patterns change over time and this paper
reports on a unique dataset that records every book
read by an individual, Mr M, over a 50 year period
(1963 to 2012). Our plan is to make these data open
source so that others can explore and evaluate different
ways of visualizing them. We briefly describe the
dataset and some initial studies that evaluated a
visualization of some of Mr M’s long term book reading
patterns to see how effective it was at both facilitating
self-reflection and enabling him to share his reading
history.
Digitizing Mr M’s notebook
Mr M is 80 years old and has recorded in the same
notebook (Figure 1) every book he has read since
1963, averaging just under 40 books a year. He
continues to do this but we have focused on the 1905
books he read over the first 50 years of his records. He
notes the title and author of each book he has read in
sequence and also indicates when a new year has
started (Figure 2). We photographed each page of the
notebook and then manually converted the data into
records in a MySQL database. We also added extra
information about the books, including date of
publication, a short description and an image of the
book cover. We also stored information about the
books’ authors in the database.
Design of the book visualization
Mr M rarely uses a computer (“I do not like to stare at
screens”) and is also colour blind, so the visualization
had to be easy to interact with and use colours that he
could distinguish. We decided to use the cover images
of each book to visualize Mr M’s reading and built an
application in Processing. Initially, the covers were
arranged in a grid but we shifted to arranging them by
year as bars in a histogram (Figure 3b) as it allowed
years to be compared more easily. When the cursor
moves over a book cover a larger image is displayed
along with a short description of the book, the year it
was published and author information (Figure 3a). We
added functionality to the visualization at Mr M’s
request. Clicking ‘r’ highlights in yellow all the times
when the book currently under the cursor has been
read (Figure 4). All the non-highlighted books remain
inactive until ‘r’ is pressed again. Clicking ‘l’ highlights
in blue all the books that have been read by the author
of the book currently under the cursor (Figure 5). All
the non-highlighted books become inactive until ‘l’ is
pressed once more.
Figure 1. Mr M’s notebook that he
has used to record every book he
has read for more than 50 years.
Figure 2. The first ten handwritten
entries in the notebook made in
1963.

3. Evaluation
We conducted three sessions, each lasting around three
hours, at Mr M’s home, where we interviewed him
about his book reading habits and he explored the
interactive visualization. We also interviewed seven
adults who described themselves as regular readers (6
female, 1 male, aged between 23 and 77), asking them
about their motivations for reading as well as getting
them to evaluate the visualization.
Results
Regular readers
The participants were all positive about the
visualization as it was “... more related to your personal
reading history. It is like your personal bookcase”
[Participant 1] and “... the equivalent of a giant library
without having to own all the books, as books take so
much space in your house” [Participant 2]. Participant 1
explained the role of their book shelves in projecting an
identity and also as a way of facilitating conversations
about books: “When you’ve read them on eBooks [...]
you cannot show off to people. That is probably the
reason why I like owning books, so I can show to
people how many books I read. I like the idea of other
people knowing that I read a lot of books. It is not just
to show off because you might find someone who read
the same books as you and then you can talk about
them.”
All seven participants showed a strong interest in
knowing which books they have read and when they
have read them over the course of their lifetime. They
thought it would give them insights into their life: “... a
little bit of an idea of what kind of person I was when I
was younger...” [Participant 1]. Participant 2 thought
that “it would be interesting to correlate the books
we’ve read with different moments in out life – whether
that is our age or other external factors”, emphasising
that “... it would also be interesting to know the books
I’ve forgotten about.” “I think the choice of your books
depends a lot of the moments you are living in your
life. I believe that if you are going through a very
stressful period, you just pick easy ones”, reflected
Participant 5. Participant 4 concurred, “...books you
read can say something about your personality. It can
vary by the place you are in that particular moment”.
“[They] can tell a lot about yourself – what you are
interested in or the period of your life you are reading.
I think it could show you what type of periods you go
through your life by your book choices” underlined
Participant 3. Participants were also interested in
finding out how their personal taste changed over time
and whether their reading preferences could indicate
specific periods in their lives: “[I would like to
remember] what books [I have] read, [look for]
patterns ... see which books I’ve read and how many
times” [Participant 5].
Mr M – when he started reading for pleasure
He explained that, “[r]eading is not an effort for me.
It’s a pleasure [...]. In the past I used to commute into
London [and] I used to read on the train, going and
coming back...But at the moment I can read any time
of the day but previously it would have been probably
in the evening.” He credited his family environment,
and particularly his older brother Fred, with getting him
into reading and they still exchange books: “My dad
used to read a lot but I do not remember a single book
he read....Fred used to read lots of book. ... I pass a lot
of books to Fred and he does the same, lending me his.
We’ve done it for a long time. He is five years older
than me, so maybe he did encourage me to read.”

4. Figure 3b. The book cover visualization of the 1905 books read by Mr M between 1963 and 2012. Each year is represented by a bar,
with each book read represented by an image of its cover.
Figure 3a. When the cursor moves
over one of the small cover images
that make up the histogram bars, a
larger image of the cover is
displayed along with a short
description of the book, the year it
was published and author
information.

5. His reading for pleasure was also influenced by his
peers: “I remember when during the war, I was eight
or nine; the books I used to read were Biggles or Just
William. When someone would borrow it from the
library and we all heard that this person was going to
return the book to the library, we all went to the library
to be the first to grab it first!” Peers and public libraries
still play an important role in his reading: “At the
moment, I do not have any spare room for books, so I
borrow them from the library now or from other people
if I see they have got a book which would interest me.”
Mr M – motivation for recording the books he has read
Discussing his motivation for recording his book
reading, he said, “I did not do it for any particular
purpose. Perhaps, the only purpose was that later on, I
could flick through all the titles and make sure I was
not going to read a book I read before.” Mr M also told
us about other aspects of his life he has carefully
structured: “I did organise [the books on the shelves]
myself in alphabetical order according to their authors.”
“Music is another passion of mine and at one point of
my life I had a list of all the records I had. But I do not
remember if it was in alphabetical order. Recently I also
put all the music I have in CDs on a hard disk that I
have in the garage. Recently I have been playing all my
classical music – it lasts over a week all my classical
collection.”
Mr M – using the visualization
When we first showed Mr M the visualization of his book
reading he spent around two hours exploring the
books, some of which he remembered clearly and
others which he had forgotten. We added textual
information about the books to help him remember
some of the books.
Mr M - self-reflection and long term patterns
Seeing his book reading patterns he realised that:
“[From the type of books I read] I seem to be hooked
on war. [...] You see, I was born just before the Second
World War – I was five years old when the war started
and ten years old when it finished. So, my formative
years were during the WWII. I do [relate my
experiences with what I read]. Absolutely.”
Using the visualization also led to insight into how the
genre of books he read had changed over time: “I tend
to read more biography for some reason. So at the
moment [my favourite genre] it’s biography…It is
people’s lives, not only fact actually. It is quite
interesting to see what people have done and how they
lived their lives. I think it is something you do when
you are a little bit older. I mean, you kind of get a
personal comparison out of it.”
The ability to see books read by the same author led
him to reflect: “ [...] Well, when I read for pleasure, I
always come back to a Kingsley Amis book. Although it
is not one of his books that made me change my
directions in life. I can’t think of one... If there was one,
it would be a biography for sure – where you might
want to copy a person” (Figure 5).
Mr M – changes in reading
The visualization enabled Mr M to identify several
changes in his book reading patterns. For example,
looking at the books he read in the early 60s he noted,
“I’m impressed by my choice of books of that period
actually. A lot of foreign books. It looks like I was stuck
to particular authors’ names at that time for a while”.
He also identified authors (Faulkner and Moravia) who
he had been keen on but no longer read: “There are
Figure 4. Clicking ‘r’ highlights in
yellow other times when the book
currently under the cursor has been
read. In the screen shot above the
book has been read a total of four
times.

6. some books that I read then and that I would not read
again now.”
Mr M – sharing his reading
The visualization generated conversations between Mr
M and several members of his family, including his wife
and his elder brother and his children. They had been
aware of his notebook but the visualization enabled him
to share his 50 years of reading.
Summary
Reading for pleasure is an activity enjoyed by millions
of people and with the increase in the use of e-readers
there will be increasing amounts of book reading data
automatically stored. Visualizations of these data,
especially over longer periods, act as a ‘record of a life’
and can facilitate self-reflection and provide individuals
with insights into their personal development. They can
also enable people to share their reading experience
with other people and bring a social dimension to an
otherwise solitary activity. This has the potential to
encourage younger readers. We have permission to
make Mr M’s data set open source and we believe it
could be a useful resource for the personal informatics
community, particularly for researchers interested in
long term data trajectories and in the social aspects of
personal data.
Acknowledgements
We thank the people who participated in our user
study. In particular, Mr M for sharing his notebook and
discussing his lifetime of book reading with us.
References
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http://tinyurl.com/k4858af
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[11] Wright, T. Oscar’s Books: A Journey Around the
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Figure 5. Clicking ‘l’ highlights in
blue all the books that have been
read that were written by the author
of the book currently under the cursor
(Kingsley Amis). All the non-
highlighted books become inactive
until ‘l’ is pressed once more.