Bestselling Books Project by Daria Koshkina

This visualization reimagines how we understand book genres through the lens of network science and data art. By analyzing bestseller data and user-generated book labels from Open Library's API, we discovered that literary categories are fluid social constructs rather than rigid classifications. Our interactive visualization presents this insight through two distinct views: a subject-based network showing interconnected themes, and a dynamic brushstroke visualization representing individual books. The idea behind the brushstroke visualization is to provide a general view of books as independent objects, while the subject-based network shows the bipartite structure between books and the top 200 most popular topics.

Using JavaScript and p5.js, we created an explorable interface that reveals unexpected connections between genres — challenging traditional categorization — while preserving the complexity of how readers actually describe and connect with books. The visualization combines quantitative network analysis with artistic expression to transform complex bibliographic data into an intuitive, exploratory experience.