Short Stories, Irish literature, Classics, Modern Fiction, Contemporary Literary Fiction, The Japanese Novel, Post Colonial Asian Fiction, The Legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and quality Historical Novels are Among my Interests








Saturday, October 1, 2011

October Reading and Blogging Plans and A Look Back at September

Blog Notes for September 2011

My notes on my blog are  mostly written so I will have a clear idea of the progress or regress of my blog through the time of its existence.  

My blog visits in September 2011 are just over 400 percent higher than Sept 2010.   I do not know how many GFC followers I had in 2010 but I ended Sept 2011 with 578 GFC followers and 1308 on Twitter.   

The most common city of residence for a blog visitor continues to be New Delhi, followed by London.   In the USA the most common state of residence is California.    On a typical day I get visitors from about 45 countries.   

I added the Wibiya tool bar to the bottom of my blog.   I have been seeing it on a lot of blogs lately so I decided to try it.   You can customize a lot about it.  I like the pop up message it allows and the instant translate feature.   In addition to Sitemeter that I have used for nearly two years I added StatMeter as a tracking tool.   Of the two, StatMeter gives you a great deal more data.   Both are free in the basic models.

In September I read some paranormal short stories and plan to read a few more in October.   The "big read" of the month for me was The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.   I also really enjoyed two wonderful collections of short stories, The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories and The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories.   

October Reading and Blog Plans

I hope to complete The Life and Opinions of  Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne and Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.  In addition to these "big read items"
I hope to read:

Likely Reads
  1. Koroko by Natsume Soseki
  2. The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier
  3. The Black Pool by George Sand
  4. The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster
  5. The Outcaste by Saadat Manto
  6. Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov
Possible Reads
  1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
  2. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
  3. IQ84 by Haruki Murakami
  4. The English Teacher by R. K. Narayan
  5. The Steppes by Anton Chekhov
  6. Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope
Short Stories

I have no precise reading plans for short stories other than to read a few more older paranormal short stories and two stories by Gogol for the classics circuit.   Short stories are now a very big part of my reading life and of my blog.     I hope to post on three new collections of short stories also.   

As always I give my greatest thanks to the readers who take the time to comment on my posts.   

Mel u

6 comments:

@parridhlantern said...

BLIMEY, not that organised myself. Congrats on that leap 400% is brilliant, also Glad to see Londoners have great taste & follow you. I have Soseki's Botchan on my tbr, as well as Iq84 by murakami(but so has the whole world it seems)+ too many others to name I must curb my book sprees. To the tech side I use sitemeter as well as Googles own, but like the sound of statmeter so will check thanks.
My only addition is Great Blog, keep on keeping on.
Parrish.

Buried In Print said...

Crossing the Hugo and Sterne off the lifetime reading list plan will feel good I'm sure. Nice that you're already such a fan of short stories to alleviate the burden of such long works, as enjoyable as they are in their own way!

Mel u said...

Parrish-thanks for your comments-the longer I have statmeter the more I like it-way more info than sitemeter

Buried In Print-I read the Sterne many years ago-the Hugo work is huge and it will in fact be good to have it in the "read" category-it is a really powerful work

Emma at Words And Peace / France Book Tours said...

I loved very much Kokoro, and am also waiting for the latest Murakami. I just received the one by Chekhov!
here is my September wrap up: http://wordsandpeace.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/september-2011-wrap-up/
Emma @ Words And Peace

Christopher said...

Orley Farm is one of the dozen, or so, Trollopes that I've read, and it wasn't one of his best, in my humble opinion. So, I'll definitely be interested in your thoughts after you've read it. I'm about half-way through the Julie Rose translation of Les Mis right now, myself. What translation are you reading?

Have a great weekend! Cheers! Chris

Mel u said...

Christopher-I am reading the translation by Isabell Hapwood-it is an older translation now in the public domain-I am reading Les Mes. via dailylit.com-