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The Best and Worst of 2013
It’s 2014 already! Which means it’s a new start for everyone, a time to improve a little bit. And I certainly intend to improve my blogging. That brings me to the point of this article: analyzing my 2013 stats.
But my yearly round-up isn’t just about stats! No, I’ve always thought this blog is more than just stats so I want to share with you posts I thought were particularly good/enjoyed writing as well. Yet in keeping with my tradition I’ll introduce the posts based on statistics first.
The 5 Best Posts (Traffic)
1. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome (5,076 hits)
2. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal (3,287 hits)
3. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton (1,646 hits)
4. The Day an Author Suggested I Kill Myself (1,642 hits)
5. The Giver by Lois Lowry (823 hits)
(These are just the views for 2013, not all time.)
The thing I find so interesting about the top 5 posts is that if you look to The Best and Worst of 2012 it turns out my review of The Outsiders had more hits when I had fewer followers than it has this year. It only has 1,646 hits compared to 2,615 throughout all of 2012. I’m happy my old posts are still getting decent traffic but it’s interesting how that’s gone down. Another interesting thing is that The Outsiders was my top post last year with just 2,615 hits. This year my top post has over 5000 hits. I think it’s due in part to my “Best and Worst of…” series but also because the post has simply been shared lots and I’ve had more traffic overall this year. Continue reading
2013 in Review (WordPress Annual Report)
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 59,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 22 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
For those of you wondering, yes I’m obviously still posting my own analysis tomorrow but this is a little preview if you’re curious.
The Best and Worst of December 2013
I know that I usually save these posts for the beginning of the next month, but I have my 2013 analysis scheduled for that day. So I’ll just analyze December in December, just like last year.
December has been an awesome month for me. At the time of writing I have 6,149 total views, which includes 3,878 unique views. That means that I’m up from November and seeing as I’ve had 5 consecutive months of higher-than-average stats I think I can safely call it as it is: my blog is growing. This is in part thanks to the 41 new followers I’ve welcomed to my blog this month for a total of 633 followers! Follower stats have always been more important to me than views so I’m very happy about this record-breaking month.
So what were my best posts this December?
1. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal
2. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
4. How to Read 100 Pages in an Hour
5. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
The usual suspects are the top two posts but I’m so happy that my speed-reading tutorial has finally taken off. ‘Calling all Authors!’ is a big success in part because I had a lot of help with promoting it on Twitter and The Masquerade Crew. It also helps that many authors told their friends about the opportunity, which is why I now have so many submissions for prizes for my reading challenge.
So what were my worst posts this month?
1. Arlo and Jake Enlist by Gary Alan Henson
2. Genghis: Birth of an Empire by Conn Iggulden
3. Discussion: Favourite Book Covers
4. The 3 Best Books to Read in the Bathroom
5. City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare
As usual, none of these really surprise me. The book reviews are for older books/indie books and the one article in there was admittedly pretty dumb. This is the first time a discussion post has appeared in the 5 worst articles of a month, but that’s understandable seeing as it is an older one and it was never all that popular when it was first posted.
Well, that pretty much sums up my December: awesome. My stats are up, I’ve been averaging a little over a follower a day for the whole year and life is good. And the funniest thing? In 2012 December was a horrible month; my stats took a huge dive. So now, of course, in 2013 they’re going strong.
How has your December been?
Look What Just Arrived! (#14)
Yesterday I spent Christmas with my family and consequently got a lot of books as presents. (We’re a pretty bookish family—my father got more books than I did!) The only book I didn’t get for Christmas was The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson. That was recommended to me a while back and I picked it up as I did my last-minute Christmas shopping on the 23rd.
Anyway, here are my new books:
- Onyx by Jennifer L. Armentrout
- Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore
- The Devil’s Concubine by Jill Braden
- The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson
- Ingenue by Jillian Larkin
- Earth Bound by Aprilynne Pike
- Song of the Nile by Stephanie Dray
Frankly, I’m really excited to read all of these. So excited, in fact, that last night I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning to finish Bitterblue. The review is to follow shortly.
The Devil’s Concubine is a book I reviewed for Wayzgoose press and I asked for it for Christmas because I had only an ebook copy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happier with ebooks now than before when I didn’t have a Kindle, but I still prefer paperbacks. Ingenue is the second book in the Flappers books by Jillian Larkin and I’m really interested to see where the stories of the girls go. The same goes for Onyx by Jennifer L. Armentrout because of the cliffhanger at the end of Obsidian, the first book.
Song of the Nile is yet another second book and this time it encompasses a period of time that’s very rarely written about: after Cleopatra Selene married King Juba. I’m interested to see how Stephanie Dray fills in the gaps in the historical record and I’m hoping that she does as good a job as she did in Lily of the Nile.
The only book that I really know nothing about was Earth Bound, a gift from a friend. It’s not the sort of thing I would normally pick up on my own time because there’s going to be a love triangle (it’s mentioned right in the blurb), but I’ll try my best to read it with an open mind.
If you celebrate Christmas, did you get any books as presents? Which ones? Do you see anything you like here?
The Kindness of Strangers (True Stories to Inspire you this Christmas)
Merry Christmas!
Instead of the usual simple holiday message I thought that this year I’d spread the Christmas cheer through a series of stories highlighting the kindness of strangers. The following stories are about what seem like everyday acts of kindness to the total strangers involved, but they made a huge difference to me. So I hope that on this Christmas you’ll read these stories and be inspired to perform little acts of kindness all year long.
Breaking the Silence
I couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8 when a relative of mine took my sister and I out to lunch in the city. My little sister is only 3 years younger than myself but I’ve always acted like her protector, especially around this relative. He could be gruff with us kids and sometimes was downright cruel, as he was on this particular occasion.
The restaurant (I don’t remember what it was called) was having a buffet and this relative piled food on my little sister’s plate. I was able to escape this because I could serve myself. I quickly finished my lunch, but my little sister, who wasn’t really hungry to begin with, couldn’t finish. She said she was done eating and asked our relative if we could go, but he said she had to finish everything on her plate. He then went for a cigarette break, leaving my sister (who was now crying) and myself at the table. Continue reading