Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

cremepat OP t1_j5jg7jd wrote

I analyzed data pulled from my Kindle to make the visual. Analysis and chart done in R. I used illustrator to add gradients to the “plumes” and lay out the final viz.

I read 94 books last year, roughly split between fiction and nonfiction. More details about my 2022 reading here. At the bottom of this post I documented how I grab data from my Kindle.

196

PromiseChain t1_j5jkdxg wrote

Counterintuitive but once you read the legend carefully it makes sense. Maybe the color gradients make it a little hard but other than that it’s quite nice and original.

40

AnkitD t1_j5jl6tz wrote

Beautiful and very creative!

66

dimkal t1_j5jl7kw wrote

This is awesome! Tba Ms for sharing. How did you come up with such a visualization style?

3

omeralal t1_j5jtvi1 wrote

I read books at first, and was very, very, confused

−1

ElderFlour t1_j5jwt9n wrote

Very nicely done! Extremely creative.

95

EvilCat57 t1_j5jxxyf wrote

Yooooo this is stunning!!! I’ve always been a sucker for infographics, and this is one of my absolute favorites!!!

9

cremepat OP t1_j5k4x7v wrote

Replying to dimkal (#1,450,555)

thanks! I just played around with the data for a week or two, trying to come up with a more data art concept than straight data viz. This ended up being the best concept I popped out

7

FriarSky t1_j5k5qvm wrote

Finally, a plot that actually fits this sub!

207

CouldStopShouldStop t1_j5k65uw wrote

That's the first actually beautiful data I've seen on here in a while. Well done!

48

rhiever t1_j5kaknq wrote

Such a cool aesthetic. Great job.

1

Old-Tree-3 t1_j5key96 wrote

What R function did you use to obtain this graphic?

5

S0r0n t1_j5kg4zk wrote

You're either a really fast reader or you got a lot of time

14

B33rP155 t1_j5kgwx4 wrote

Should be in data is ugly

−9

Pleionosis t1_j5kjrnt wrote

Great visualization! Does the width of each plume have significance?

61

jonbristow t1_j5klc23 wrote

This is the best post I've seen on this sub

5

Pleionosis t1_j5kmaih wrote

Replying to cremepat (#1,454,170)

I like the idea but I feel like the length affects the perception of the width. Patternist looks very thin at first glance but if I look closer, it appears that you liked it.

19

Huge-Comfort376 t1_j5ko3fw wrote

Such a work of art, and does a great job of communicating the data. Beautifully done.

−1

jonny24eh t1_j5kuzl7 wrote

What's "genre fiction"? Wouldn't all fiction be in some sort of specific genre?

7

mmmmm_pi t1_j5kvvoz wrote

Replying to PromiseChain (#1,450,489)

At first, I thought the long Patternist series started out as general fiction and then became science fiction by the end. The gradients look pretty and I imagine OP tried solid colors, but found things to look too chunky.

8

mmmmm_pi t1_j5kw331 wrote

Replying to cremepat (#1,450,104)

What's the most books your were reading simultaneously? Seems like several given the overlaps in the visualization. And how many of these were re-reads of something you had read before?

Anyway, this is a lovely and artistic way to display this information.

37

tauwyt t1_j5kxeg7 wrote

According to your site you read at a pace of 81 pages an hour... that's actually absurd, are you actually reading everything or skipping a ton of pages?

14

cremepat OP t1_j5l070i wrote

Replying to jonny24eh (#1,455,138)

It's a term that can be kind of pejorative for books that aren't literary fiction (literary fiction: think stuff that you read in English class/gets major awards/reviewed in big publications). In my case, that category is mostly made up of mysteries and historical fiction,

5

cremepat OP t1_j5l0ocu wrote

Replying to mmmmm_pi (#1,455,256)

Interesting question! I looked, and 9 were rereads, 5 of which were of Tana French books.
It's hard to define how many books I have going at once, but let's say it's the number of books on any given day that that a) I've started, b) I have yet to finish, and c) I do eventually finish.
By that definition, I have had anywhere between 1-6 "in progress", with a median of 2. But of course I do put down books for long periods of time, so I don't think those really count (tho I didn't exclude them)

25

Ana-vera t1_j5l1oqy wrote

I really really love this, what a great idea!

1

tserrien t1_j5l2wx6 wrote

one of the best works on this sub in a long time! cool visualization and topic!

1

coffeesharkpie t1_j5l2zl8 wrote

Wow, that's a beautiful graph! Still, it leaves me extremely torn as its beauty alone just can't get me over critiquing its functionality. But devisive is good, as devisive gets people to talk.

Mind sharing a bit more information on the R packages and approach you used?

3

cremepat OP t1_j5l3980 wrote

Replying to tauwyt (#1,455,394)

I analyzed my wpm data a couple years ago and I tend to read 350-500wpm depending on subject/complexity. At an average of 300 words per Kindle page, 81 pages per hour equates to 402 wpm. (edit: google seems to suggest 400wpm is normal for lifelong/heavy readers)

11

everything_nerdy t1_j5lahl2 wrote

This is beautiful OP. I am just incredibly sad that this post is so underappreciated. Ugly excel graphs supporting a political view hit the top of this sub regularly. Creative and actually beautiful visualisations get buried.

1

Real_Ad_9971 t1_j5lap95 wrote

This is really nice!

The visuals are making the data a bit harder to decipher, which I would find frustrating if I were you. But it really is beautiful.

And I think it's really nice you incorporated such a large amount of information into one aesthetically pleasing graph...

1

cremepat OP t1_j5law6s wrote

Replying to coffeesharkpie (#1,455,918)

I get you, I was cautious about this viz for that exact reason. I do love looking at data art, but some of it really doesn't resonate with me because I can't understand what point is being made (and as a data journo that's my whole job lol)

I've done this exact analysis three years running and was getting bored of the same old traditional-ish visuals I'd been doing. I wanted to do something completely different to re-engage myself in the creative process.

I fiddled with a lot of "field of flowers" ideas using geom_bezier in ggplot to make curved "stems" showing the length of the books I read, and layered geom_points to make flowers colored to represent the genres. Everything I worked on in that vein felt like I was ripping off Valentina D'efilippo.

I randomly adding in a coord_polar to my plot and really liked the output. From there, I refined in ggplot (eg removing the flower heads) and gussied it up in Illustrator

8

Thiizic t1_j5lcody wrote

I love it! Though next time I would skip the gradients. Makes it confusing

0

Mr-Negi- t1_j5lej1n wrote

Beautiful but less effective visualisation of data.

1

cremepat OP t1_j5lpu2d wrote

Replying to dahlia-llama (#1,457,724)

I read every night before bed! It's such an ingrained habit now I can't fall asleep without doing it.

I also don't watch much tv (ironically because I find it hard to sit still and focus), so that time goes to reading too

22

Adventurous-Quote180 t1_j5lqd4b wrote

Replying to dahlia-llama (#1,457,724)

If you think about its easily doable. Lets say OP reads one page per minute, which should be doable. Then reading two books a weak, with an avarage of 300 pages means reading 600 minute a weak, which is is a bit more than 85 minutes a day. Even if you read slower, reading two hours a day should be doable. Ofc only if you enjoy reading

7

NihilismRacoon t1_j5lt2px wrote

Replying to dahlia-llama (#1,457,724)

Best advice I always see is first and foremost just making time for it, it sounds simple but with so many different ways to spend your time nowadays it takes a conscious effort to carve time out to read, even just starting out reading 30 minutes a day and you'll notice a dramatic uptick in the amount of books you're reading. Try reading in different formats, (physical, ebook, audiobook), having a designated "reading place" can help people get into that mode of reading. If you're not enjoying a book, move on, don't force yourself to read books that will make it feel like school and at the end of the day reading is supposed to be fun. Hope this helps.

8

PMmeHappyStraponPics t1_j5m8i44 wrote

Nice work.

I was pretty busy with work this year; I only managed to read 7 books.

1

ComplexInflation6814 t1_j5ma22p wrote

I love this data presentation - it might not be the clearest to read, but the overall effect is really beautiful and fits this sub much better than the usual post.

0

notreallyanumber t1_j5mt1xl wrote

Love your graph! I hate your genre selection (or is it Amazon's?) with a fiery passion...

1

notreallyanumber t1_j5n60tm wrote

Replying to cremepat (#1,461,521)

Memoir is nonfiction, so is True Crime. Why separate them and not other subgenres of nonfiction? Seems arbitrary, but I suppose you're tailoring your genres based on the number of books you read so that's fine I guess...

Distinguishing between Literary Fiction and Genre Fiction seems elitist and snobby.

Meanwhile you have SciFi and Fantasy as a single genre instead of the two distinct genres that they are, but they also both count as Genre Fiction, do they not?

In summary, the term Literary Fiction just pisses me off because who gets to decide what is and isn't "Literary"?! And then you have two genres squashed together, another genre that subsumes that two-in-one, and then a third genre that subsumes your last two genres. It all just rubs me the wrong way.

I hope you don't take offense, because none was meant. Maybe the graph doesn't work with a less arbitrary genre selection? Anyway, you asked why!

1

macrian t1_j5nk2je wrote

Now you need to make a website that does this for people. We put book titles in each month and this visualisation is generated. And when you are done. Please ping me.

1

wolf1moon t1_j5nyxf8 wrote

Super cool and pretty! Any particular favorite from scifi and fantasy?

1

rammo123 t1_j5o2ta2 wrote

Replying to FriarSky (#1,452,742)

For the millionth time, this sub is not about aesthetically pleasing data. The fact that it’s very hard to glean information from this graph makes it an actually very poor fit.

−1

cremepat OP t1_j5or7uh wrote

Replying to notreallyanumber (#1,462,617)

My thought process: I wanted to color by genre, but I needed to group them into categories to reduce the number of colors. Prob not obvious, but the warm colors are fiction and cool colors are nonfiction. I pulled out the subgenres I read the most of and lumped the rest into broad buckets.

2

xFrostyDog t1_j5rgsjw wrote

My flower would have no petals :S how do you juggle reading more than one book at a time? I always found it confusing

1

cremepat OP t1_j5twl5v wrote

Replying to xFrostyDog (#1,477,551)

I tend to read the same book for several days in a row before going to the next. I mostly switch because something super tense is happening in the first one and I need a reprieve. I'm definitely not reading multiple books in the same day!

2