Blog Stats for May, 2017
There are now 3063 posts online
Since inception The Reading Life has received 4,629,515 page views
The five most viewed posts in May were
"The Assignment" by Saadat Hasan- almost all from India and Pakistan
Pigeon Pie by Nancy Mitford -
"The Blind Dog" by R. K. Narayan - almost all from India
Completed by two classic short stories by authors from the Philippines
Russian Bots. Why.???
About every two months for a three day period I receive thousands of hits from all over Russia, all under a second on different posts on the blog. The hits last maybe three days then stop. During a three day period I got 17,187 such hits. There is no spam left. Have other bloggers experienced this level of bot hits? What are they looking for?
Top home countries of visitors (not from bots)
USA, the Philippines, India, UK, and Germany. Top USA state is California. Most common home city is the greater Manila area with London and Los Angeles next.
Novels Read
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie. a reaction to horror of The trumping of America . As good as his best
Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh. Part three of The Ibis Trilogy, first rate historical fiction
Ways to Disappear by Idra Novey. 2016 Jewish Book of the Year
Smile by Roddy Doyle. A delight for his legion of fans
Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi. Beautiful work
The Master by Colm Toibin, second reading. Henry James in London
I almost never do negative posts on novels basically because I don't go far in books I don't like. Life is to short to read bad books just so you can trash them.
Leonora Carrington
I continued my reading of the work of Leonora Carrington with her acclaimed memoir Down Below and two short stories
Short Stories
Prompted by the sad news of the Passing of Denis Johnson, I read his collection of linked short stories, Jesus's Son. Great Beyond by ability to speak upon. Tales of Desolation Row
"Senor Pinedo" by Mavis Gallant. Part of my participation in the read through hosted by Buried in Print.
I also was very happy to discover two new to me very talented writers of speculative short fiction, Isabel Yap and Allysa Wong, both with strong ties to the Philippines.
Works I read in May but refrained from posting upon
I read only one book I did not post about, The Politics of Opera A History from Monteverdi to Mozart by Mitchell Cohen. Superbly learned book. Opera plays a big role in Proust and other European writers, mostly French. Serious literary and musical autodidacts will love this book. Very learned
I also did not post on a short story by Yiyun Li, "A Small Flame", you can read it for free on The New Yorker
I offer my great thanks to those who take the time and trouble to leave a comment.
To my fellow book bloggers, the greatest readers in the world, don't stop blogging because you feel the forces of ignorance are in an ascending mode.
Mel u
The Reading Life
5 comments:
Mel u,
While the blogger stats I get are not very specific, I am provided with a map that indicates where most hits come from. I was surprised at first to see that hits from Russia are frequently very high, sometimes higher than from the US, England, and Canada.
Fred, I wonder why I had 17,000 one second hits on a blog in three days. Thanks for sharing your experience
Mel u,
All those one second hits sound like a robospammer program.
Since I can't link up hits with sources, I have no idea what posts are popular in Russia, unless those are spammers and hackers.
Fred, there were no spam comments left, unless previous deletions of comments blocked their spam. The most legitimate hits from Russian for me are on Katherine Mansfield
Mel u,
Katherine Mansfield? That's interesting. A long time ago when I did have a program that linked hits to places, I found that frequently I would get a large number of hits on a particular post from a specific part of the country, say the northern part of the state. And, several of those would have an .edu address. I guessed that some teacher had given out an assignment that involved a story I had just posted on. Perhaps that's what was happening them.
I also find that the number of hits drop near the end of May and pick up again in early Sept. I suspect that represents the ending and beginning of the academic year here in the States.
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