Building My AI Literary Cartographer
Throughout the years my reading experiences have remained in separate pieces consisting of Instagram reviews, StoryGraph stats and handwritten notes. The individual moments they record fail to form a cohesive understanding of the larger picture. I want to change that.
In the interest of getting hands on experience with developing AI agents, I'm challenging myself to develop an AI system which will analyse my reading activities by identifying emotional and thematic connections between my books.
I will document my entire process through this blog. I will collect my past reviews before training the agent and building the automation system to achieve the final result. The blog will serve as my documentation and journal throughout this entire process.
Why “Cartographer”?
Cartographer (noun): a person who draws or produces maps. (Oxford English Dictionary)
The word choice was made because maps consist of more than lines since they create order from scattered details to produce navigable landscapes.
This project should function as a cartographic tool. The reading landscape of my life consists of emotional peaks and hidden paths which form a vast and shifting terrain. The AI agent functions as a cartographic tool which maps my literary inner life by showing my past reading experiences and un-visited literary territories.
Vision
I aim to create an active reading map which follows the emotional and thematic connections between books and their impact on my personal development as a reader and individual.
I view this system as a dual-purpose tool which serves as both an archiving system and a reflective tool and a guide that uses my reading history to recommend books which resonate with me on a personal level.
Purpose
- To Map: I aim to link emotional and thematic elements from my reading so isolated reviews become a unified story about my personal experiences.
- To Reflect: Through this agent I seek a reflective mirror which will reveal my reading experiences by showing both the content I read and the reasons it affects me and the ongoing questions I ponder and the development of my reading preferences.
- To Discover: Through my Literary DNA I aim to find books and authors that algorithms cannot detect because they match my emotional state and worldview and my changing reading preferences.
- To Preserve: I want to create an active collection of my reviews together with themes and insights which will expand and transform as I do.
Core Principles
- Emotion over Algorithm: I care more about resonance, mood, and inner life than popularity or genre.
- Connection over Collection: I want meaning and patterns, not just lists or stats.
- Evolution over Fixation: My taste and worldview will change, and this should reflect that.
- Subtlety over Noise: I value the haunting, contemplative, and intimate over blunt recommendations.
What I Aim to Create
- A Literary DNA profile that grows with every book I read.
- A living emotional map of my reading life.
- Discovery Drops of books and authors that feel chosen just for me.
- A dynamic archive of my reviews and reflections, preserved beyond social feeds.
The project extends beyond technology because it requires me to understand my reading self while following my recurring questions and observing how different books interact with each other in new ways.
Series Note
The first entry of this journal marks the beginning of a continuous documentation of the construction process. The journal will track my progress through two main stages which include training the AI with my past reviews and designing the automation system for my Literary Cartographer's survival and development. The first step of vision will lead to the collection of unprocessed material which includes my reading history that will serve as the base for the upcoming map.