My Life in Books: Walking, reading and a little AI help

The 15th March 2022 was a pivotal moment in my life. I was on my usual daily walk up the hills of the Cotswolds in England when I spotted a yellow book on a wall. It is very common where I live for people to leave things they no longer want in the hope someone else will find a use for it. The book was The Yellow Jersey Club, a biography of all the winners of the legendary Tour de France cycle race. I have been a big fan of the tour since my student years watching Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich battle each other for the yellow jersey, so I picked it up with the thought that I might read it sometime.

As I continued on my walk, I started to browse through the book. I was drawn in and began to read in earnest - all the time continuing to walk. Thus was born what I call, somewhat unimaginatively, Walking-and-Reading. This is exactly what it says. I combine my two favourite activities, walking and reading, at the same time.

Inspired

This has been quite transformative when it comes to the volume of reading I do. Until this discovery, I would usually sit down to read a book in the evening before bed, and would barely manage a few pages before feeling sleepy and putting it down.

You can't fall asleep while walking, and ever since I have been churning through books at a rapid pace, many of them brilliant works of literature that I may otherwise never have experienced.

There have been a few mishaps along the way. There was one time when I spotted an old lady ahead of me pushing a baby in a push chair up a hill. I quickly judged I could finish the paragraph before needing to pass, so got back to reading.

Oops!

Unbeknown to me, she stopped to take a breath. I am not sure how to put this. But if it wasn't for her having a bright dress that caught my eye at the last moment, I could very well have inadvertently, err, mounted her from behind. Bumping into an old lady's rear is bad enough. Doing it while she is pushing a baby up a hill, well... let's just say a jury of your peers is unlikely to look kindly on that.

Thankfully, the gods - or perhaps old lady fashion influencers - were on my side, and I managed to sidestep her before anything untoward happened.

Surprisingly, such accidents are very rare. The act of walking and reading is not that technically difficult. As I like to say, the walking and reading bit is easy. The really hard thing is walking and reading while not looking a complete idiot. That I have not yet mastered.

The Point

The reason I have spent so much time rambling on about Walking-and-Reading, rather than getting to the point, is that without it this interactive timeline of all the books I have read would likely not exist.

It really sparked a renewed interest in literature, and, inspired in a way I had not been for years, I started jotting down my thoughts on the new books I had read, and plotting them on a timeline. One thing led to another and I began working backwards, adding my previous reading history to the timeline.

I'll be the first to admit this became something of an obsession. Many of the books I read when I was a child - or even last year! - I could only recall the most basic outline of, and the author and title were lost to me. But I just had to include every single one of them on the timeline.

A Silicon Hand

This is where AI - Claude, in particular - has come to the rescue. It has been brilliant at identifying book titles and authors from my ridiculously vague memories. "Moody German guy no one likes builds a small plane from the wreck of a larger one to rescue survivors." Yep, that's The Flight of the Phoenix. "Two scientists kept imprisoned by a vastly more intelligent alien. One dies and the other decides to die too, but only after etching a message in his skin using his fingernails." No problem, that's Goldfish Bowl, a dark tale that appears in a Robert Heinlein short story collection.

"Nice guy. Big cross." Okay, even us flesh beasts can get that one. Dammit, that reminds me I need to add that book to the timeline. How could I forget that one! As you can probably tell, this is not a complete timeline of all the books I have read but only those I can remember - there are bound to be more that will come to me.

Confession

I want to be honest here about my use of AI on this project. This intro has been written by me first and spell-checked and grammar-checked by Claude, but is 99% my own work and humour. Around a third of the book reviews on the timeline have been written by me. The rest have been generated by Claude.

My intention is to eventually go through the AI ones and update them to my voice, but I know that this will take a long time, especially given that as a father and entrepreneur I have lots of other commitments, and that's before I get to all the walking and reading I want to do.

I want to share what I have created before I die - or, at least, before I am uploaded to the cloud. I have therefore marked the AI entries with a "*" at the end so you can tell them apart.

Without further ado, I present to you My Life in Books timeline. Enjoy!

View the My Life in Books Timeline →

About

This timeline was made using ChronoFlo Timeline Maker, a free online service for making interactive timelines that can be shared on the web. Information for the timeline was compiled mainly from my memories with the help of Claude to identify book plots and authors.

Credits

Design: ChronoFlo Timeline Maker
Information: Me and Claude
Images: Open Library

Favourite Novel

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

Top 5 Novels

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Human Stain by Philip Roth
Collector Collector by Tibor Fischer
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Favourite Author

Tibor Fischer

Favourite Non Fiction

The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch

Favourite Science Fiction

The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch

Any thoughts on the timeline, or spotted a book I should add? Get in touch at hello@chronoflotimeline.com. To keep up with the latest ChronoFlo Timeline Maker news, you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook.