Ever wonder what your favorite novel would look like as an infographic? Programmer Jeff Clark took Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, exploring the book in a set of visualizations exploring the relationships between words, themes and the shape of the classic novel (click to enlarge).
With digital books and graphic-making tools, we can now see how words interact inside massive novels. Here’s an excerpt:
A word used in multiple places in a text can be interpreted as a connection between those locations. Depending on the word itself the connection could be in terms of character, setting, activity, mood, or other aspects of the text. This graphic shows a number of these word connections. The 365 chapters of the text are shown with small segments on the inner ring of the circle with the first chapter appearing at the top and proceeding clockwise from there. The outer ring shows how the chapters are grouped into books of the novel and the book titles are shown as well. The words in the middle are connected using lines of the same color to the chapters where they are used. (link via)