Survey of graph database models by Renzo Angles and Claudio Gutierrez. (ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) Surveys, Volume 40 Issue 1, February 2008, Article No. 1 )
Abstract:
Graph database models can be defined as those in which data structures for the schema and instances are modeled as graphs or generalizations of them, and data manipulation is expressed by graph-oriented operations and type constructors. These models took off in the eighties and early nineties alongside object-oriented models. Their influence gradually died out with the emergence of other database models, in particular geographical, spatial, semistructured, and XML. Recently, the need to manage information with graph-like nature has reestablished the relevance of this area. The main objective of this survey is to present the work that has been conducted in the area of graph database modeling, concentrating on data structures, query languages, and integrity constraints.
If you need an antidote for graph database hype, look no further than this thirty-nine (39) page survey article.
You will come away with a deeper appreciate for graph databases and their history.
If you are looking for a self-improvement reading program, you could do far worse than starting with this article and reading the cited references one by one.