Breort’s library’s history

Some background about my digital book list

Eventually published 12 July 2023

I’ve read a few books in my time, including The Hidden Persuaders⁰ (back in my early student days, after my dad had recommended it), Crime and Punishment¹ and The Communist Manifesto² (those during my early working life) and while this isn’t a complete list of all the books I’ve ever read, it does have those I have read since 2010.

I’d been keeping a list of read and to read books to help compel me to dive (slowly and steadily) into a bit of web development and see what I could make. Around late-2010 and into early-2011, I did eventually manage to make myself a usable, web-based reading list.

An early user interface sketch in pencil for my digital reading list to help figure out best places for buttons and content. — An early user interface sketch for my digital reading list

It became a quiet companion to my reading over the years and, apart from a bit of tinkering with its look-and-feel around 2013, or so, it was always a helpful addition to growing my digital skills and my personal recording of titles read.

Three small-screens of a smartphone device each separately showing an aspect of how the digital reading list displays its contents, like books to read, books being read and the list of read books grouped into the months and years they were finished. — How various sections of the first version of my digital reading list (a responsive website) looked when viewed on a small-screen

However, I had always wanted to (slightly) expand the reading list with a few additional features and push my coding skills as well but it was never a priority for me to do so, what with life and livelihood and all that. Plus, it did the job I wanted it to do pretty well and what need was there to add more features for its audience of one, I surmised.

Rebuild

Early-2019, I decided to (finally) make my (private/only accessible by me!) book list public on a new personal website.

At that time Studio Orb (2016–2021) was my existing professional side. But, during its latter years, Atelier Rob (2019–2021) became its (and my) complementary personal website. I’ll leave it to readers to figure out the naming reasons behind each ‘side’ but Atelier Rob became a useful support for my perspectives on life’s happenings.

I was aware (back in my digital book list’s early days) of Goodreads and its (in my opinion at the time) lacklustre efforts, certainly at being some kind of wannabe social network for readers! However, I was very keen to go my own way with my digital book list, primarily, as I have mentioned, to prove I could make one myself and also gain a little bit of coding help (using some coding-detective work!) via the internets.

I’m impressed a little more so with Goodreads’ efforts today, but will very likely never move to it as this library on Breort is all my data (as is the rest of Breort’s contents) which I like to own and my building and development efforts which I like to use; always happy to (and do) pass on and recommend books I have read to others in a real, non-digital environment, though!

Onwards

My book list’s small coding expansions, beyond just thinking and note-taking about the ideas and hopes I had for it, were tentatively happening alongside these endeavours and, around mid- to late-2019. It quietly helped encourage, assist and motivate me to study it, relearn its workings and make an effort to update it with some of the additional features that I’d been thinking about.

I started expanding my original digital book list to show favourite passages from the titles I was reading and my own reviews. These ideas helped me explore and use the project as a chance to test my skills, memory and learning abilities, new and old, and focused around MySQL and PHP, coupled with my reasonably in-depth knowledge of HTML and CSS; it all helped me to create a new version of my original web app and going back helped to go forward.

Atelier Rob read book list for 2019 seen when using a typical desktop website browser and showing a list of read titles grouped by month read. — *Atelier Rob* read book list for 2019

Atelier Rob book read view for 2018 when seen in a standard website browser window on the desktop. — *Atelier Rob* book read view for 2018

Within Atelier Rob I presented the oft-thought and finally (and suitably) tweaked version two of my reading list that was (more) public-facing, albeit you had to know it (Atelier Rob) was there, a bit like Books, version one!

Anyway, I kept reading and recording titles that I had read as it’s a part of my operating system and version three of my digital reading list here is another step on life’s journey.

The early titles I have recorded are those that formed my original web app (which I inventively called Books!). Some of them now have a few modifications to include the odd quote and personal review that, strangely, as I was looking through many of my own bits and bobs as part of a clear out and tidy up, I was finding a few photos and notes that I’d kept of the books that had clearly left a mark!

To conclude

Here is this article’s final point which may inadvertently repeat a few things but isn’t that what (academic) conclusions do?

This 2023 version of my digital book list, here on Breort, is version number three³ and here is some clarity of the versions created of my digital book list...

Version one, called Books, became a useful and well-used catalogue of the books I had read since 2010.
Version two was the first ‘official’ public release of the titles I had read from 2010 onwards and with reviews and quoted passages from read titles of late-2018 to about late-2021 as well.
Version three, Breort’s library, has quite a few under-the-hood improvements and general tidiness along with further database and coding interactions to smooth things out. Plus, some visual (and CSS) improvements that work more efficiently across the whole Breort website.