Category: Uncategorized

The Best and Worst of August 2015

It’s September 7 today so my Best and Worst Of… post is a little late this time but better late than never.  Particularly when some exciting things happened in August stats-wise if not exactly posting-wise due to my little unplanned hiatus before and after I moved to the city.

In August I received a total of 6,432 views with 2,970 of those being unique views.  That’s the best The Mad Reviewer has done in months and it’s largely thanks to one person I’d never even heard of until a few days ago: Jerry Pournelle.  He stumbled across my infamous author post and then checked out my reviews, which led to him recommending them to his readers during one of his posts.  This in turn caused me to receive 1,076 views in one day, shattering my record of 893 from when Anne Rice posted on Facebook about a review of mine she found.  I thought this would be the end of it, but no!  The next day (August 30) my record was shattered again with the daily total becoming 1,295 views.  That’s simply amazing and I am very grateful to Jerry for recommending my blog to his readers.

So what were the best posts this month?

  1. How to Read 100 Pages in an Hour
  2. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal
  3. The Day an Author Suggested I Kill Myself
  4. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
  5. Caesar’s Daughter: Julia’s Song by Alex Johnston

My review of Caesar’s Daughter by Alex Johnston has in the past received very little attention but Jerry happened to stumble upon it and it was one of the reviews he recommended in his post.  So that’s why a new post finally cracked the top 5 list!  The others are pretty predictable but I was surprised that my speed-reading article surpassed my Game of Thrones article for the first time in a really long time.  I suppose with university and school starting, students and teachers alike are wanting to learn how to read faster to study material more efficiently.  Well, I certainly hope my article helps but there really are no shortcuts to learning how to speed read.

With such a surprising selection of the best posts, what were my worst posts this month?

  1. Edwin: High King of Britain by Edoardo Albert
  2. The Mine by John Heldt
  3. The Silver Pear by Michelle Diener
  4. September Sky by John Heldt
  5. The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf by Gerald Morris

I absolutely loved all of these books in the ‘worst’ category so it’s a bit disappointing to see John Heldt’s books back on here.  They are self-published but he has done reasonably well for himself in sales so seeing The Mine and September Sky back on here is slightly surprising/disappointing.  Oh well, the posts on the bottom rotate from month to month so it’s not really that big of a deal.

So that was my August.  It was busy and inconsistent but September is going to be much better.  How was your August?

 

Lazy Sundays: Addicting TV Series

As you guys know, I love both The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones TV series.  But lately I’ve been working my way through Breaking Bad (just finished the third season) and House of Cards (just finished the first season).  Both shows are ridiculously addictive and yet I just bought a new TV series to work my way through this winter: HBO’s Rome.  I’ve heard both good and bad things about it but it was on sale at HMV so I figured I might as well give it a try.  If I totally hate it I can sell it to the used DVD shop down the street.

So what TV series do you guys follow?  What would you recommend to other people?  Why?  Have you watched Rome?  If so, how was it?

 

Discussion: Twitter Usage

As a blogger I resisted joining Twitter for a long time but over the years I’ve actually found it quite worthwhile (thanks so much to Mark from The Masquerade Crew for convincing me).  It’s let me connect with authors and fellow readers in much more meaningful ways than I initially thought it would.  I’ve used it as both a promotion tool for my posts as well as a way to quickly bug my favourite indie authors about when their next book is coming out.

But what I want to discuss is this: If you use Twitter, how do you use it?  Is it more of a promotion tool or a networking tool?  Both?  Neither?

Let me know in the comments below!

Poll: What kind of eReader do you own?

It seems like now almost every book blogger and/or author owns an ereader.  People like me own an ereader for convenience as a book blogger but still prefer paperbacks.  Others have almost exclusively switched to ebooks.  However you like to read, it doesn’t really matter.  What I’m curious about is this: what kind of ereader do you own?

If you do own an ereader, let us know what kind in the comments as well!  Are you happy with it?  Would you buy another one from that particular brand or would you try to switch over to a different kind?  (i.e. from a Kindle to a Kobo or would you try one of the less popular ones like a PocketBook?)

Long Weekend!

Today it’s the long weekend and I really don’t feel like doing anything so I’m taking the day off.  If you’re Canadian, enjoy your long weekend as well!  If you’re like the majority of my readership and aren’t Canadian, then try to have an adequate or even great Monday.  (Yeah, I know, Mondays are the worst.)