Implementation of a User Viewed Content List

as an academic exercise I have decided to attempt to implement a 'viewed content history' in Drupal 5.12.

at first I figured that this would be trivial, by simply doing the following:

create a custom history type of item using CCK with fields that represent data that should be stored (title of content, user's rating, view date, other site specific information) that is private to the user.
creating a module, that at a user's first visit to a specific instance of a content type will request the creation of a different content type(using NodeFactory to create the node or drupal_execute() to fill out the form)
create a list of that content type under the my account menu option - implemented the same way as the 'tracker' core page for recently added content.

support from modules (node factory, node type filter, cck, views).

Yes, this would be an inefficient way to do this, but this is not a production site.

my main question is more of this type: as a novice in coding using php, as well as a first-time user of Drupal, is this going to be too hard to implement in a timely manner?

I've searched for modules that would assist in the implementation of a user history, but it seems like this isn't something that people usually care about enough to write modules for, beyond the current session.
I know how to track the last few 'recently view items' in a session, but I am more concerned about adding this information to the database in order to track other types of data (for example, if the user wished to leave a private comment with a reminder of why they rated a content a certain way, or a private link to a similar content).

I am sure this seems like an easy endeavor for most of the advanced php users here, but I am an applications developer, so I am having some concerns about the feasibility.