Book reading is a wonderful hobby and those who read books of any genre, are enriched with abundant knowledge and vocabulary. You may have read many books and know a lot about authors, but there are just thousands and thousands of great authors out there, both from the past and present, there is an ocean of books and their authors, literally.

Google Art Project is one of the most wonderful sites I have ever visited; under the project, Ocean of Books literally makes you dive deep into the ocean of never-ending knowledge.

To start with, type the address and click the ‘Launch experiment’ tab. A new page will give you an option to ‘explore’, clicking it will open the map of oceans on the map of the world, divided in genres and common interests. For instance, Science, History, Poetry, Education, Arts and Entertainment, Novels, News, Religion and Beliefs, Law and Government, People and Society, Classics and so many more.

These genres or categories, are just the large and small irregular shapes in which there are a lot of dots. If you click any of these categories or sections, it will be zoomed in for you, with now closer view of the dots, go closer and you will see the names of various authors to appear on each dot.

There are also bigger dots which represent the island, or separate region, clicking it will zoom in even more authors from that region. In short, click any name, and the brief info box opens up at the left side of the screen, with brief info of the author, and some links with details to either open and read or share it on the Facebook.

Apart from that, the interface is very easy so even the youngest of kids can explore without any difficulty. However, I found the colour scheme to be bit boring with its pale pink and pale blue hues. If it had vibrant colours, it would have grabbed more attention.

So for all the bookworms out there wanting to read about authors and their work and also want to know their region explore: https://artsexperiments.withgoogle.com/ocean-of-books

Published in Dawn, Young World, November 7th, 2020