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.

#49 Thank You for the Days, by Mark Radcliffe (Simon and Schuster)

Autobiographies and biographies have been few and far between during this challenge, and although Thank You for the Days, by DJ Mark Radcliffe isn’t quite one of those, it’s definitely in that ballpark. Rather than follow the formulaic route of discussing his upbringing - and revisiting all those sentimental childhood episodes which bore most readers of autobiographies – Radcliffe has wisely opted to reminisce about a series of notable moments during his first 50 years.

So we have The Day I Took Bros into a Goods Yard, The Day I Introduced David Bowie on Stage and The Day I Heard That John Peel Had Died, and it works pretty well, all told. In the introduction, Radcliffe himself points out that a good deal of his life story isn’t even interesting to him, so ‘there’s no reason why anyone else should want to hear about it all’.

The collected snapshots do provide a fairly rounded picture, however, and Thank You for the Days is much like the self-deprecating Radcliffe himself, hugely knowledgeable about music, pretty funny at times, occasionally insightful and regularly entertaining.

I have a few criticisms. Some of it is overly sentimental and some of the comic asides are a bit obvious when written down but, equally, there are also some real hits, such as the time when Mark and colleague Lard upset Kylie Minogue by asking an unscripted question at a screening An Audience with… and the inside story of his sacking from the Radio 1 Breakfast Show.

So, rating time:

#49 Thank You for the Days, by Mark Radcliffe (Simon and Schuster) - 6/10

Next up: Acts of Violence, by Ryan David Jahn (Macmillan)

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