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.

Glad all over

Any cursory examination of the books I have reviewed will reveal that Malcolm Gladwell was among my favourite authors of my year spent on the 100-book challenge. I read three Gladwell books - Outliers, The Tipping Point and What the Dog Saw - in quick succession and a further (Blink) soon afterwards, and
promptly wished I hadn't because it resulted in a near three-year wait for his next opus.

Thankfully, the wait is almost over with the release of David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants, what's been billed as a study of the balance of power between the weak and the strong, and how the small outwit the mighty.

I've been following the pre-release publicity, and it's clear that there has been a backlash to Gladwell's work; complaints that his anecdote-led arguments are too simplistic and that one of the ways he profits, through large scale seminars that regurgitate his work, take advantage of those who hold him up as a modern guru.

Indeed, there is a revealing Guardian interview with Gladwell that addresses those very points here - while an extract from David and Goliath can be read here.

For my part, I have no issue with Gladwell's easy-to-follow style of writing; in fact, I would argue that it's his main strength. As a reader primarily of fiction, particularly in my leisure time, if you'd told me in January 2010 that by the end of the year I would have read four largely sociological studies, and gone so far in the evangelical stakes as to recommend and even buy them for friends, I wouldn't have believed you.

Furthermore, it's prompted me to seek out similar work that I have hugely enjoyed over the past few years, such as Incognito, The Secret Lives of the Brain, by David Eagleman and Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice by Matthew Syed (both of which are highly recommended). So, I can't wait.

#79 Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell (Penguin Group)

Utterly brilliant.

If you’re judging the merits of the books I’m reading by the length of the reviews they generate, you’re going to be sorely disappointed in this instance because I could write for hours on the brilliance of Outliers and not do it justice. So I’m not even going to try. Suffice to say, if you haven’t read it, you’re missing out, and despite only finishing it the other day, I’ve managed to bore several people on its subject already.

A sociological study at its heart, prospective readers shouldn’t fear. Malcolm Gladwell is never anything other than a fascinating storyteller and intersperses his points, many of which are extremely provocative, with some entertaining case studies into the lives of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Canadian professional ice hockey players and Korean pilots and much, much more – even his own family.

Gladwell’s objective is to discover which factors contribute to someone’s success, whether reaching the top - and he’s talking about the very top - of a profession, can simply be down to innate talent and hard work, or whether it matters in which month of the year you were born. His investigations and conclusions are often incredible.

From the lessons educational systems can take from rice paddy fields, to the cultural causes of plane crashes, Outliers is gripping, inspirational, thought-provoking and, thanks to a wonderful writing style which regularly makes the complex seem simple, very readable indeed. Go read it.

So, rating time:

#79 Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell (Penguin Group) - 10/10

Next up: The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart, by Glenn Taylor (Blue Door)

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