Well, July was actually a pretty good month for me.  I got some serious reviewing in, writing 7 reviews in one day and 5 in another (and spacing the rest out like I normally do).  I also did some serious reading and have begun requesting more from NetGalley which I really shouldn’t considering my author backlog.  Ah, the wonders of procrastination!

Overall monthly views are down from last July (3,937 compared to 4,350 last July), but that doesn’t really concern me at this point.  It may be that WordPress changed the way they’re counting statistics or it could be that people weren’t visiting my site as much.  It’s not a big deal considering that I began the month with 413 followers and ended with 462!  Followers are more important than views to me, so getting almost 50 views in one month is quite an accomplishment.  It seems that the more followers I already have, the more I attract.

But enough rambling.  Let’s take a look at the 5 best articles of July 2013:

1.  Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal

2.  The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome

3.  How to Write a Review Request

4.  My Least Favourite Book Tropes

5.  The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

For once, there are four newcomers to the top 5 list, three of which were published just in July.  My Game of Thrones article is frankly, no surprise.  I published it at the beginning of the month and am still averaging 15 views per day on it.  It’s particularly SEO friendly and clicky so it’s spread around through social media more than my rants usually do.  Similarily, How to Write a Review Request and My Least Favourite Book Tropes were articles/rants that were easily shared and promoted discussion.  And of course, The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome continues its streak at the top.  As for The White Queen, well, The White Princess just released and there’s quite a bit of buzz surrounding the series at the moment.

So what articles were the worst 5 this month?

1.  The Journey by John Heldt

2.  The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel

3.  There Comes a Prophet by David Litwack

4.  Kushiel’s Scion by Jacqueline Carey

5.  Look What Just Arrived! (#3)

Again, no real surprises here.  They’re all either self published books, old books or old articles.  It’s a shame that so many good books end up on my bottom 5 list in terms of hits, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re still good books.  It would just be nice for the authors to have a little more publicity, especially in the case of indies.

So that was how my July went: a blur of books and work (ah, tourist season).  How was yours?  Are you reading anything interesting?