Stats not bad

I've recently been spending some time looking closely at website stats at work, and it prompted me to have a quick delve into the stats of this here blog, whereupon I noticed that my musings had just passed 5,000 views.

This isn't a particularly large figure, especially for a blog that dates back almost four years, but it's not too bad either given the lack of self-promotion and indeed the fact that for the majority of the first year, when content was being uploaded on a far more regular basis, I largely preferred to keep it out of the public eye.

As I said at the outset, the entire challenge (including the blog) was primarily for myself, but that approach has changed slightly over the past year, which perhaps make the stats a bit more relevant. Indeed, they show that since the end of 2010, when the challenge (supposedly) finished, 80 per cent of the views have come in the past five months when I have been more actively promoting the blog.

The biggest surprise come from looking at which reviews or posts received the highest views, though, with the review of Thank You for the Days, Mark Radcliffe's entertaining sort of autobiography, streets ahead of everything else. In fact, it's got almost five times as many views as the third highest post, an assessment of Sex, Bowls & Rock & Roll, a lacklustre comedic turn that I had such little enthusiasm for I barely had the energy to write the review. Maybe people came for the 'sex'?

In second place is the tale of my exchange with an author, Tom Shone, who kindly got in touch following my review of In The Rooms, and completing the top five are two blogs uploaded as recently as October focusing on Malcolm Gladwell and a new book recommendation service, which were both quite topical - a rarity in these pages.

It's also interesting to note that there are two obituaries, for Dick Francis and Tom Clancy, in the top 10, while looking at the entry and referring sites and location of audience reveals some further oddities. But that's for another blog.

A light is Shone on the blog

Behind, as I am, with my reading, I’ve been trying not to spend too much time on these reviews. Where possible, I’ve recently been declining the opportunity to research authors further or find out more about the subject or the themes of the book I’ve just completed so I have more opportunity to wade through the mounting pile of pages which lurk in the corner of my lounge, catching my eye as regularly as an attractive girl in a bar.

But when the author of the book you have just reviewed gets in touch to pay you a compliment and suggest some further reading, it’s hard to say no...

I wrote the other day about how much I enjoyed the links between alcoholism and authors explored within In the Rooms, by Tom Shone. And Tom himself has pointed me in the direction of a more obvious study – an article he wrote for Intelligent Life.

Apparently, ‘Of America’s seven Nobel laureates, five were lushes’ and there is an equally long list in these shores, referencing the likes of Dylan Thomas, Malcolm Lowry, Brendan Behan, Patrick Hamilton, Philip Larkin, and Kingsley Amis.

It’s absorbing stuff and, by proxy, it’s also a real insight into the production of In the Rooms. This article was clearly made possible from the research Shone conducted before writing In the Rooms and it’s interesting to see details which made it into the book (perhaps most obviously when alcoholic writer Douglas Kelsey refers to newly sober Raymond Carver regularly inviting him to play bingo) and the huge amount which merely contributed to the feel of his novel.

Tom’s own blog Taking Barack to the Movies (covering ‘politics, pop, books, movies’) is equally interesting – although it has cost me precious hours in my quest to complete this 100-book challenge...

More positively, Tom’s kind comments at last bring to an end an area of this challenge where the Friend of the Wench, was one up on me, my rival having previously been honoured with the author of a reviewed book getting in touch with him.

Solely in the interests of competition, therefore, and completely self-indulgently, I feel I should point out that Shone is a former deputy literary editor of the Sunday Times. He presumably knows a bit about half-decent writing, then, and he ‘loves’ my blog. Have that Friend of the Wench!

#66 In the Rooms, by Tom Shone (Windmill Books)

This might not be the most celebrated or well-known novel I’ve read this year (it was an impulse pick-up at the library), but it was certainly among the most enjoyable, for a number of reasons.

A lot of In the Rooms (a phrase used to describe help meetings of alcoholics or drug users) dovetails nicely with this challenge – not that I’m an alcoholic or anything. Its main character is a literary agent, Patrick Miller, who has moved to New York and comes across a legendary reclusive author and finds the only way he can approach him is at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. So he has to pretend he’s an alcoholic.

I deliberately didn’t add the phrase ‘with hilarious consequences’ to the end of that last sentence, but there are some very funny moments, mostly involving the characters he encounters at the meetings, as Miller finds himself slipping further and further into his deception and is unable to extricate himself from the lies he has told.

It’s a merry little tale. But where it chimes with this blog is in the book’s underlying close look at the relationship between authors and alcohol, and whether the likes of Raymond Carver, Elmore Leonard and Charles Bukowski wrote better drunk or sober.

Add in some insight into the workings of publishers, writers and literary agents, and guest appearances by the likes of Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney, and it has the feel of real ‘writers’ book. I really enjoyed it.

So, rating time:

#66 In the Rooms, by Tom Shone (Windmill Books) - 8/10

Next up: Wodehouse at the Wicket, edited by Murray Hedgecock (Hutchinson)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating