My reading tracker dashboard

As someone who loves reading, I wanted a simple way to track what I'm reading, what I’ve finished reading, my favorite books, highlights, due dates, and personal goals - all in one place.

That’s where SquaredUp Cloud proved to be the perfect fit. It’s a powerful platform that allows you to visualize data from various sources in one unified dashboard. Using its Web API plugin, I built a personalized and aesthetically pleasing dashboard to keep an overview of my reading world.

Why I built this dashboard

I’m passionate about reading and enjoy using my e-reader to explore titles from various online libraries. With such a long list of books waiting for me, I realized it was time to find a better way to keep everything organized.

• What am I reading now?
• Which books are due back soon?
• How far have I progressed?
• What genres do I tend to read?
• What are my goals for this year?

So I decided to build a dashboard that brings all this information together, using data from Open Library and Readwise via their APIs.

Dashboard Walkthrough

1. Currently Reading

This section displays the books I’m currently reading, using data pulled from the Open Library’s public API. I configured it with a straightforward HTTP GET request that points to the "currently-reading" endpoint.

Here's a glimpse of how I have set up the configuration:

2. Loaned Books

This section tracks the books I’ve borrowed and their due dates. It pulls data from a private Open Library endpoint, which requires session-based authentication.

To access the data securely, I used a Cookie header to pass the session token as part of the request configuration.

3. Genre Breakdown

I created a pie chart to show which genres I read most often, based on the books I've completed. It’s a fun way to spot reading patterns and see where my interests lie.

4. Reading Progress

To track how far I’ve come with each book, I used horizontal bar graphs. They provide a real-time update of my progress, so I can easily see how much I’ve read and how much is left to go.

5. Highlights and Notes

One great thing is I’m able to surface all the highlights I’ve marked while reading, along with any notes I’ve captured. This makes it easy to reflect on the key takeaways from each book.

6. 2025 Reading Goal

For my 2025 reading goal, I used the CSV plugin - Raw Text data stream in SquaredUp, where I simply copied and pasted the raw CSV data directly into the tile.

7. Books Return Deadline

To track how many days are left before each borrowed book is due, I used SquaredUp's powerful SQL Analytics, which can be enabled directly in the tile editor. Since the API only provides the expiry date, I wrote a SQL query to calculate the remaining days by subtracting the current date from the expiry date.

SELECT 
  _key,
  Expiry,
  CURRENT_DATE AS todayy,
  CAST(CAST(Expiry AS TIMESTAMP) AS DATE) - CAST(CURRENT_DATE AS DATE) 
  AS days_until_expiry
FROM 
  dataset1

Monitoring is enabled on this tile, so that when a book is 5 days or less from its return date, it changes state to Error. Currently, 1 book (Joy of x) is in error state.

And that’s why my tile is currently in an error state - because one of the conditions I set (books due in less than 5 days) has been met. This triggers the red status, which then rolls up to the dashboard (My Reading Room) and Workspace (Web API Things), thanks to SquaredUp’s health rollup logic.

Now that my monitoring is set up, SquaredUp can alert me when its state changes by sending notifications.

I have set up a Custom Webhooks destination – to send me alerts to my Telegram about my books' expiry dates. This ensures I’m notified whenever a book is nearing its return deadline.

In summary

This reading tracker dashboard is a great example of how SquaredUp can be tailored to visualize any personal or professional data in an insightful, easy-to-manage way.

I can easily track my reading progress in real time, stay on top of return deadlines, keep my goals in sight, and revisit highlights to remember key takeaways - all in one place.

SquaredUp’s smarter dashboards help engineering, product, and IT teams make better decisions through a deeper understanding of their data. We have a completely free tier available for you to use today. Sign up for free now!