Acknowledging two milestones — December 2010
When I started this site, it was really just a way of letting off steam. I spend so much of my time writing what others pay me to write, this was my busman’s holiday. But as weeks have become months, I’ve found myself spending slightly more time on this. Traffic has been increasing to the point I may actually have to take a more professional approach. Not that I’ve any plans to monetise it, but the whole enterprise might have a better feel if I begin to be a little more disciplined. Ah well, we’ll see what happens. If anyone out there would be interested in contributing reviews or opinion pieces, let me know. There’s an e-mail address on the “About” page. The site might benefit from a diversity of views or spreading the coverage to include music, games or more general topics of interest.
So we’ve a New Year approaching and I’ve just posted the 150th review. To celebrate both landmarks, I decided to post the top five posts for books and the visual media. Thanks to your support, all the pages in these lists have one-hundred or more hits. I say this without any real sense of achievement. The top review sites have pages with thousands of hits. But it’s nevertheless satisfying that, without any real effort on my part except writing and publishing the pages, I am attracting hits.
I place no particular significance on the success of these winning posts. I had originally speculated I might do better with reviews of anthologies because each page would mention multiple authors — all the better to hit me with. That there are two anthologies in my top five books is therefore a pleasing result. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next twelve months. As to the films (none of the television reviews made it into the top five), with one exception, the most popular are “foreign” language where there are not so many mainstream reviews. I’m popular by default but not proud. I take my popularity no matter why it comes. So, without more ado, here we go:
Top five books
Buyout by Alexander C. Irvine
Best Horror of the Year: Volume One edited by Ellen Datlow
Is Anybody Out There? edited by Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern
Jade Man’s Skin by Daniel Fox
Leviathan Wept by Daniel Abraham
Top five films
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest or Luftslottet som sprängdes in the original Swedish
Bruce Lee, My Brother
Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Time Traveller — The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
Les Aventures Extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec or Adele: Rise of the Mummy
Thinking about books 