Connections

The web of connections

1,037 hand-made links across 330 books. None of them were generated by similarity scoring.

Every book on this shelf carries a small set of explicit links to other books. There are 1,037 of them. They are made by hand, one at a time, and each one means something specific — not “these are both about finance,” which is what a tag is for, but that one book is the prequel to another, or refutes it, or describes the same mechanism in a different domain.

The links accumulate rather than being designed. A book arrives, it gets read, and the question is which of the 330 books already on the shelf it argues with. Most books attach to five or six. A few attach to twenty. And some attach to almost nothing, which is its own kind of information — books that connect to nothing are, in my experience, disproportionately books that said nothing.

About seventy-five of the pairs here point one way only. That is deliberate: a later book often comments on an earlier one that has nothing to say in return. Both pages show the link; only one of them claims it. There is more on the method on the about page.

Where the shelf connects to itself

Connection density between themes, counting every linked pair. The library has two dense clusters that barely touch each other, and one thin bridge from history into technology.

Number of connections between each pair of themes
ThemeBusiness & FinancePersonal Growth & LeadershipPsychology & MindTech & FutureHistory & Foreign AffairsSociety & CultureMemoir & BiographyCrime & JusticePolitics & Power
Business & Finance 66 37 15 18 34 34 14 23 30
Personal Growth & Leadership 37 98 168 8 2 14 14 1 5
Psychology & Mind 15 168 108 11 14 16 9 1 8
Tech & Future 18 8 11 36 64 17 15 17 15
History & Foreign Affairs 34 2 14 64 163 82 58 21 242
Society & Culture 34 14 16 17 82 73 27 22 119
Memoir & Biography 14 14 9 15 58 27 39 15 135
Crime & Justice 23 1 1 17 21 22 15 33 53
Politics & Power 30 5 8 15 242 119 135 53 341

Click any number to see the pairs behind it. Theology & Faith is left off these axes — it connects to almost nothing, and an empty row made the grid unreadable.

  • 242 History & Foreign Affairs ↔ Politics & Power
  • 168 Personal Growth & Leadership ↔ Psychology & Mind
  • 135 Memoir & Biography ↔ Politics & Power
  • 119 Society & Culture ↔ Politics & Power
  • 82 History & Foreign Affairs ↔ Society & Culture
  • 64 Tech & Future ↔ History & Foreign Affairs

How two books connect

the shortest chain between any pair

Pick a book at each end and the map walks the links between them — usually three or four hops, sometimes none at all.

Explore the map

Focus on one book

Search a title below, or click any node on the map, and this panel fills with that book’s direct connections and everything two hops out. Every book page links straight here.

Search a title to focus it · hover to reveal threads · click to open · scroll to zoom

On a phone this opens in focus mode — one book, its connections, and theirs — which is readable where a 330-node graph is not. Tap any neighbour to travel to it.