A few reviewish things for this weekend

Although I only just finished my Best of 2014 posts earlier this week, I already have a couple of books that I'm going to be reviewing this weekend.  First up will be Kelly Link's upcoming collection, Get in Trouble, followed by Sait Faik Abasıyanık's A Useless Man:  Selected Stories (it comes out on Tuesday; the Link in early February).  I also hope to review Andrés Neuman's 2009 Premio Alfaguara-winning novel, Traveler of the Century, which will finish off my delayed 2014 goal of reviewing all of the previous/current Premio Alfaguara winners.

Doing well so far with my fitness goals, as I've either walked or exercised for 45 minutes+ each of the two days of this new year so far.  Will do some minor translation work tomorrow as well.

I have lots to do before Squirrel Appreciation Day arrives on the 21st!

Mid-December reviewing plans

It's nine days until Christmas, my usual drop-dead date when it comes to writing reviews for a year.  I have 27 2014 releases left to cover, most, if not all, in 1-2 paragraph length mini-review round-ups.  Starting after work late tonight/morning, I'm going to alternate writing 4-5 book mini-reviews with covering the final five Premio Alfaguara winners that I haven't yet reviewed (depending on when I finish reading them; might make an exception and cover some of these after Christmas). 

Starting with Christmas, I will spend the final week of the year covering various Best of 2014 lists, including a Top 50 out of the 160+ 2014 releases that I've read this year.  I have dozens of short fiction collections, works in non-English languages, debut novels, and other categories to cover, so hopefully this year's lists will be the most comprehensive ones I've posted in the 10+ years I've operated this blog.

Of course, as always with me, things can change...

A few things I'd like to review this week

I'm rushing these days trying to achieve as many of my 2014 reading/reviewing goals as possible.  While I'm uncertain how many of the 50x4 languages/books I'll manage to achieve (Spanish and French are likely, Italian is possible, while Portuguese is very uncertain at least), I do know that I have 7 more Premio Alfaguara winner reviews to write (and 6 to re-read), so I'll be working on that for this week and next.

Also planning on writing 1-2 more mini-review roundups of books, likely starting with a group of 4-5 October releases and maybe a foreign language one as well.  I have 27 2014 releases left to cover (17 already read, 10 to finish reading in the next 1-2 weeks), so I'll have plenty to keep me busy until Christmas, after which I'll start my annual Best of Year posts on a variety of categories, this time providing links to reviews of books listed.

All this and the squirrels are demanding to be fed.  My life is never at rest these days!

Weekend review plans (or rather, Sunday plans)

Been battling a severe cold these past couple of days (thus the short posts), but I hope to have the time Sunday afternoon/evening to write at least one mini-review roundup and maybe two.  I certainly will write one-paragraph reviews of 4-5 foreign language works (Italian, French, and maybe Portuguese) and if I have time/energy permitting, I'll write another mini-review post for some recent short story collections read.

Hopefully by Monday I'll be closer to full health; it was irritating having to cut short my workout Friday late night due to nausea caused by sinus drippage into my lungs.

Well, the stone is gone now...

I had an ureteroscopy done this morning for a left kidney stone (8 mm) that had caused some swelling in that kidney.  Turns out that if I had paid attention when I woke up a little before 5 AM, I would have seen the crush remnants of it in the toilet, as I somehow passed it without realizing it (my dad noticed the particles remaining even after I flushed).  So yeah, I had to endure having a stent left in me for the weekend.  Not a fun feeling, that sense of pissing fire and seeing blood come out with the urine.  At least I have some really nice painkillers for the weekend.

But I also have things to write.  As I said in my last post, I've managed to do a lot of reading lately and I do plan on attempting to write 2 reviews/day for the rest of the month, starting either later this weekend or Monday at the latest.  I do have about two dozen books already read that need some sort of commentary written for them.  One of the latest, read today before the procedure, is Phil Klay's National Book Award-nominated Redeployment.  It is a fantastic read and might just be my personal favorite of the five Fiction finalists.  I'll write more about it tomorrow or Sunday.

Also started reading Steven Erikson's Willful Child this morning and finished the first 200 pages or so before leaving for the surgery.  It actually made me chortle a bit, something that rarely happens when I'm reading.  Finally, I hope to review Julia Elliott's excellent debut collection, The Wilds.  This year has been an excellent one for collections and this is one of the best of that fine crop.

Now to sit back and enjoy the haze...

Weekend plans

Not much time to post today, so here's a tentative plan for the weekend.  Much of this depends on how I feel after my ureteroscopy Friday morning to remove an 8 mm kidney stone, but I do hope to have several more reviews online by Monday morning.  Here's what I'm planning to review:

Late night/early morning Friday:  Robert Darnton, Censors at Work:  How States Shaped Literature

Saturday:  David Cronenberg, Consumed; Frankétienne, Ready to Burst

Sunday:  Marilynne Robinson, Lila; Ismail Kadare, Twilight of the Eastern Gods

Monday:  Paul Theroux, Mr. Bones


But again, a lot of this will depend on how I feel after tomorrow's surgical procedure.

A few books finished today to be reviewed shortly

Had planned on writing a review today, but I spent most of the morning and early afternoon traveling between medical clinics (I have an 8 mm left kidney stone that will require a very wince-inducing medical procedure sometime next week; yes, I'm in some discomfort still), so all I managed to do was finish reading Michael Faber's The Book of Strange Things and Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem and read the majority of Phil Klay's National Book Award-nominated short story collection Redeployment.

I'm working this weekend, so I'm uncertain if I'll get these reviews written tomorrow or not, but I do plan on having at least two of the three reviewed by Monday morning.  Then again, it might depend on how I feel.  Stupid, silly body.

Looks like the next five weeks or so are going to be a bit busier than usual here

Although it is still another four days away, I thought now would be a good time to announce my quasi-annual November review month goal.  Since I'm not an aspiring piss-poor novelist, I don't do the write a novel in a month thing many others do.  Instead, I'm going to try to write 50 reviews over 30 days (or maybe 33, counting what I write starting tomorrow).

Luckily, I have a backlog of nearly two dozen books to review, so it shouldn't involve any more reading than usual.  Unfortunately, this means I can't make excuses for not reviewing.  Time will tell if this is insane or just challenging.

Going to write several short reviews over the next few days

I've fallen behind in my reviewing and there are several books that I read months ago that I haven't yet reviewed.  Since some of my specific impressions have faded over time (and dozens of books, if not 100+, read in the interim), I think I'll write a few 2-3 paragraph reviews in order to provide at least a record of my general, lingering thoughts in advance of the late December Best of 2014 reads.

Just because some of the upcoming reviews will be shorter does not necessarily mean that these are lesser books; the majority I did enjoy in some form or fashion.  It also will make it easier for me to cover some of the Italian and French-language award finalists if I do so.  Also this doesn't mean I won't be writing longer reviews as well, but those will depend upon several factors.

Things I'm supposedly going to be working on this month

My second bout with kidney stones this weekend set me back quite a bit.  Not only did I miss the final two days of the 2014 Southern Festival of Books due to sometimes intense kidney/abdominal pain, but I didn't get any reviews written this weekend.  So it seems I'm going to have to be write virtually a review a day for the rest of the year in order to achieve my review goals, or at least to cover the books covered on this list. 

I do know that late tonight/Tuesday morning I will have a review of Howard Jacobson's Booker-shortlisted J up in advance of tomorrow's award announcement.  I also might try to write a review of one of the 2014 Prix Médicis finalists before I go to bed.  Then I would like to tackle this week at least two other Prix Médicis finalists that I've read before covering the 2014 Premio Strega longlisted/shortlisted titles that I've read but haven't yet reviewed.  It takes longer to write shorter-length reviews of works read in my fourth and fifth-best languages (French and Italian), so I might end up spreading those out.

After that, I think I'll try to review 1-2 of the bolded titles (the ones I've already read) on the list linked to above.  Certainly will cover the 2014 National Book Award-longlisted titles listed (by the way, their shortlists should be announced later this week, if memory serves) and then certain high-profile releases, like the Murakami, then will be reviewed at last.  I hope by the end of November to have my to-review list down to fewer than twenty titles, but it'll be a challenge, since I undoubtedly will be adding books to that list in the coming weeks.

Whenever I do catch up, that list should make for a comprehensive review of 2014 literature, with the possible exception of SF/F, of which I have read relatively little this year.  Now to see how quickly these plans fall apart.

A few things I'd like to write about this week

Been a bit busy this weekend to have much time to write reviews, but I do plan on reviewing the two Booker Prize finalists (Howard Jacobson's J and Ali Smith's How to be Both), along with at least two National Book Award-longlisted titles for Fiction (Phil Klay's Redeployment and John Darnielle's Wolf in White Van).  If I have time, will cover more of the Prix Medicis longlist as well.

It's funny how once Autumn arrives how my reading mood changes.  I seem to read more the final quarter of the year than any other time.  Maybe when it first starts to become cool at night, I just find myself staring more at my books than wanting to walk outside.  Certainly I've been reading some of the leatherbound books I've bought in recent years (recently finished re-reading Thoreau's Walden and might write a review of it shortly; also just begun reading Hugo's Les Miserables in both French and in the Easton Press edition of the original English translation) and I'm tempted by the idea of setting up a specialized blog just for reviews of "classics" after I've posted them here or on Gogol's Overcoat.  Redundancy is never an issue when it comes to getting people to read things that I have written, n'est ce pas?

Speaking of "classics," there have been occasional moments where I've toyed with the idea of compiling lists of possible "canonical" literatures, but with an interest in hybrids, of those works who can influence multiple societies and cultures.  For example, having Faulkner in not just a list of Southern literature, but also Latin American for his influence on the Boom Generation.  Sappho and Byron.  De Sade and Mirbeau.  Combinations like and unlike these.  Things that could shape world views and how we treat fellow human beings.  Such a corpus could say much more than just reiterating whatever socio-cultural "party line" you might want to follow when it comes to literature and its value today.

But for now, I'd like to dip back in to contemplating just what Hugo was saying through that sinner Jean Valjean.  Some things are ever a pleasure no matter how many times one has read it in the past or how long it has been since the last read.  Always something new to discover in certain literary works, if only we are willing to allow ourselves to be transformed by what we encounter within.

Here's a list of already-read books that I want to have reviewed by October 31st

Although I have no energy to review tonight (been traveling much of the time that I wasn't watching college football), I have been trying to decide which reviews should be forthcoming.  Seems that I have almost two dozen books that I've already read for which I haven't yet written reviews.   Since these are books that I fully intend to have reviewed by year's end, I thought I'd just motivate myself a bit more and see that each of these is reviewed by the end of October.  This will mean at least 5 reviews/week for the time period, so there should at least be plenty of original content for the month to come.  Here's the list, based on their publication date:

Dave Hutchinson, Europe in Autumn

Laurie Halse Anderson, The Impossible Knife of Memory

Donatella Di Pietrantonio, Bella Mia

Elizabeth McCracken, Thunderstruck & Other Stories 

Richard Thomas (ed.), The New Black:  A Neo-Noir Anthology

Gail Giles, Girls Like Us

Kalyan Ray, No Country

Spencer Reese, The Road to Emmaus

Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Richard House, The Kills

Justin Taylor, Flings

Howard Jacobson, J

Pierre Demarty, En face

Claudie Hunzinger, La langue des oiseaux

Nathalie Kuperman, La Loi Sauvage

Christine Montalbetti, Plus rien que les vagues et le vent

Valérie Zenatti, Jacob, Jacob

David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van

Kelly Barnhill, The Witch's Boy

Ali Smith, How to be Both

Dylan Landis, Rainey Royal

200

Tomorrow marks the 265th day of 2014.  As of today, I have posted 111 reviews (86 of them being of 2014 releases) this year.  I have nearly 75 books already marked for review by year's end.  While this is daunting enough, I think I'm going to aim to outdo the grueling 40 in 40 review schedule I set for the days immediately preceding my 40th birthday in July and I'm going to try to review at least 89 more novels, poems, non-fiction, and story collections/anthologies by December 31st.  While doubtless some reviews might be shorter than others (particularly when I write short summaries of the 2014 Prix Medicis longlisted titles that I've read (four to date), I think it'd make for a nice challenging.  I know I'm planning on writing 1-2 reviews a day for November alone (might as well do a parallel challenge to the annual write a novel during that month challenge and review 30+ books or write roughly 30K review/quote words that month), so I think I can extend it through the remaining 100 days of 2014 and get close at least to 200 reviews if not equal or surpass it.

Granted that I have a backlog of reviews (roughly 20) to write, so reading time shouldn't be too much of an issue until at least mid-October.  But some works will be easier than others.  Writing about Thoreau's Walden, for example, should make for an easier essay-composing session than would reviewing something read in my second, third, fourth, or fifth languages.  But if I write roughly 6 reviews a week, roughly an hour a day/night for those corresponding days, I should be able to meet this challenge.  And for those curious about some of the books I want to write about, well, in a few hours, I'll post my commentary/review of the Latin translation of The Hobbit, called HOBBITVS ILLE, and later I'll write reviews of the translations (and well, thoughts in general on the English originals) of Tolkien's The Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin.

I also plan on finishing reviewing the seven remaining Premio Alfaguara winners I haven't yet reviewed (another 2014 reviewing challenge was to finish reviewing all 25 of the previous/current winners of that Spanish-language award), at least four of the Prix Medicis longlisted-titles, most of the 2014 National Book Award shortlists, if not their entire longlists for poetry, Young People's Literature, and Fiction, and maybe a few classics that I own in Easton Press or Franklin Library leatherbound editions.  Also, if time permits, I'm going to look into resuming reading some of William Faulkner's work, most likely the not-yet-reviewed novels collected in four Library of America editions.  Add to this the books I haven't yet reviewed from my 2014 releases post and the total should be close to the requisite 89.

But if/when I accomplish this, don't expect a repeat in 2015.  I have a feeling I won't be reviewing quite as many books next year.

Weekend Plans

Still a bit lethargic post-procedure, so I'm not sure how much of this will get done, but here are a few things I'd like to do through Monday:

1.  Finish reading Ben Lerner's 10:04

2.  Read Michael Pitre's Fives and Twenty-Fives

3.  Review at least one of the following:  John Darnielle's Wolf in White Van; Kelly Barnhill's The Witch's Boy; Elizabeth McCracken's Thunderstuck & Other Stories; and/or Gail Giles's Girls Like Us.

4.  Write review/commentary on the Latin translation of The Hobbit and maybe a full review of that work.

Now back to bed.  Can't seem to stop yawning.

Things to review this week

Funny how plans change a bit when sick with an upper respiratory virus.  I did quite a bit of reading these past few days, but some of those will be tricky to review due to reading them in French, which is not one of my three best languages for reading-to-reviewing.  But I may try to review in 3-4 paragraph capsules the 2014 Prix Medicis longlisted-titles that I did read.

Also want to review at last the Murakami, Mitchell, and Jacobson books that I finished recently, but after tonight, it might be tricky, as I hope to be cleared to return to work by Tuesday after my orthopedic evaluation Monday morning.  But I'm sure I can fit those in somehow, along with reviews of Dylan Landis's Rainey Royal and Joseph O'Neill's Booker-longlisted The Dog.

But my reading squirrels are ever finicky, so who knows what will get accomplished this week...

Upcoming reviews

Had planned on writing a couple of reviews today, but I have been battling a kidney stone attack (my first ever) since early this morning and I haven't had energy to write anything at all until now.  But assuming that it does pass in the next 24-48 hrs., here are the books that I plan on reviewing by the end of the week:

Howard Jacobson, J (Booker Prize finalist)

David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks (Booker-longlisted title)

Eimear McBride, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing (Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction winner)

Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tzukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage


If I have the chance/ability, I also plan on reading Angélica Gorodischer's1994 short novel Prodigios, which I learned last month will be translated into English sometime next year and published by Small Beer Press.  Here is my rough translation of the back cover blurb:

Latest novel of the current classic writer Angélica Gorodischer, cult SF author and maestra of generations of female Latin American authors, Prodigies narrates the history of the birthplace of the poet Novalis following his death, when it was converted into the pension place (workhouse) of Weissenfels.  Undulant, subtile and full of humor, irony and dreams, this novel fills the abandoned house of the poet with women who inhabit it for the rest of the 19th century, and it continues to compose, with the flow of history, the secret trauma of its destinies.

Interesting, no?

The "long tail" of reviewing, or why it's hard to judge reader desire by momentary stats

Read a post today by Justin Landon on his perception that multi-volume SF/F series are declining and social media/the internet are at least partially responsible.  I thought several of his arguments were weak, especially in relation to readers not caring as much for latter reviews in a multi-volume series.  Ever since I started posting reviews here consistently seven years ago, I've tagged my reviews with the chronological year of review, in order to be able to retrieve older reviews.  In addition, this blog has reviewed a lot of older books and short stories; these too I've tagged for easy retrieval.  So when I saw some of Justin's claims, I thought I'd just go through the nearly 650 reviews I've written and see what the page view points were for this.

Now there is a word of caution here:  Google/Blogger did not begin tracking page views on the current set-up until sometime in 2010, if memory serves.  Therefore it is very likely that the 2007-2009 page view counts are underrepresented here.  With that caveat in mind, here is what I chose to do:  writing down the highest review page views for at least the top 5 in each year since 2007 and placing a star beside the ones reviewed within a few months of first release, I was able to detect a few trends.  Keep in mind, however, that sometimes I chose not to write down the next-lower tier that might have been grouped together into clumps of 5-20, as was the case with many of my 2010 reviews of older books and series.  With this being said, here's the raw page view review data by year (* represents new book/translation):

2007:

Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator  - 2725 page views
Wolfe, Urth of the New Sun - 2643 page views
Andrzej Sapkowski, * The Last Wish - 2588 page views
Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer - 2484 page views
Wolfe, The Sword of the Lictor - 2146 page views
Wolfe, The Citadel of the Autarch - 1992 page views
Wolfe, Peace - 1754 page views

So for Wolfe's four-part series, the rankings go in release order, but the coda was the second highest.  These were posted within days of each other and were linked to on a few forums before Twitter/FB came into play.  The Sapkowski translation is the only then-new release to appear on this list and it too was augmented by someone linking to it on Sapkowski's English Wiki page.

2008:

Gustave Flaubert, The Temptation of Saint Anthony - 1623 page views
Junot Díaz, * The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - 853 page views
R. Scott Bakker, * Neuropath - 816 page views
Andrzej Sapkowski, * Blood of Elves - 779 page views
Joe Abercrombie, * The Blade Itself - 635 page views
Sapkowski, La espalda del destino/The Sword of Destiny - 605 page views

This is a more interesting breakdown, since with the exception of the Sapkowski being linked to on forums, I don't think any of these really got much of a "signal boost" at the time.  Pleasantly surprised by the Flaubert, however.

2009:

M. John Harrison, The Pastel City - 1205 page views
Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson, *The Gathering Storm - 916 page views
Harrison, A Storm of Wings - 649 page views
Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword - 603 page views
Dan Simmons, * Drood - 493 page views

Yes, here is fairly clear evidence that older reviews do attract a crowd, although I only reviewed the first two Viriconium novels before other things came up at the time.  I believe the WoT book did draw some Twitter activity, but I didn't have an account then, so uncertain.

And now for 2010, where I reviewed a lot of older epic fantasy and SF series.  I only wrote down some of the data due to a lot of clumping in the case of several of them.  I wrote down 20 data points, not for the 20 most viewed (although most of these are), but to show a few outliers in terms of genres reviewed here and how traffic can be drawn for those as well.

2010:

Brandon Sanderson, * The Way of Kings - 3442 page views
Robert Stanek, Keeper Martin's Tale - 2015 page views
George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords - 1595 page views
Dan Simmons, Hyperion - 1583 page views
Steven Erikson, House of Chains - 1557 page views
Karel Čapek, R.U.R. - 1542 page views
Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune - 1485 page views
Herbert, Heretics of Dune - 1429 page views
Erikson, Memories of Ice - 1339 page views
Bisco Hatori, Ouran High School Host Club - 1317 page views
Fábio Fernandes, * Os Dias da Peste (Brazilian Portuguese) - 1281 page views
José Saramago, * Caín - 1234 page views
Jordan/Sanderson, * Towers of Midnight - 1230 page views
Terry Goodkind, * The Law of Nines - 1202 page views
Jorge Luís Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beings - 1162 page views
Mario Vargas Llosa, * El sueño del celto/The Celt's Dream (Spanish) - 1083 page views
Borges, El Aleph/The Aleph - 1050 page views
Herman Melville, Moby Dick - 1040 page views
Yuiko Takamura, Caged Slave - 955 page views
Momus, Book of Jokes - 951 page views

It was interesting to see how much social media impacted this one.  I recall receiving nearly 2000 page views the day I posted the Sanderson review, as he and others linked to it on personal sites, Facebook, and Twitter.  The Stanek is due to a very popular thread at Westeros.  Yet look at the older fantasy series numbers.  As I reviewed volumes in certain series over a period of days, it seems there is some statistical variance in terms of views, but not enough to argue anything other than readers were as likely to read a review of a latter volume than an earlier one.  Also interesting to see that there were many who came to this blog looking for a yaoi review...

Now that I've shown this expanded view for 2010 alone (it's the only one where I reviewed a lot of older and then-current fantasy series), back to the top few for the remaining four years.

2011:

William Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily" - 2481 page views
Carlos Ruiz Zafón, * The Prisoner of Heaven (Spanish) - 2390 page views
George R.R. Martin, * A Dance with Dragons - 1405 page views
Rubén Darío, Azul.../Cantos de vida y esperanza (Spanish) - 1051 page views

On another site, Gogol's Overcoat, Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Zora Neale Hurston are consistently the top pages viewed each day over the 2.5 years of that site's existence.  There is a hunger (at least among students eager to plagiarize another's essays) for reviews of these earlier stories.  The Zafón was one of the earliest English-language reviews, coming out a year before the translation was released, so its popularity is likely due to there being almost no other English-language reviews when I posted mine.  The Darío I think is due to people searching for some of the poems I cited.

2012:

Dalia Lu, * The Dark God's Bride - 2135 page views
Rudyard Kipling, Kim/Captains Corageous - 1110 page views
Andrzej Sapkowski, * La dama del lago/The Lady of the Lake (Spanish) - 984 page views
Victoria Hoyt, Save the Pearls - 899 page views
Steven Erikson, * Forge of Darkness - 869 page views
William Faulkner, "Hair"; "Nympholepsy" - 832 page views

What a mixed bag.  The Lu and Hoyt were reviews of horridly-written and, in the case of the latter, objectionable books that were linked to by a lot of people on social media and their blogs.  The Sapkowski I again attribute to it being one of the rare English-language reviews of the concluding volume (which likely won't be published in English for another 2 years).  Erikson is beginning a new trilogy here; the Kipling and Faulkner are likely again due to book reports.

2013:

Terry Goodkind, * The Third Kingdom - 2327 page views
Jordan/Sanderson, * A Memory of Light - 1598 page views
Three anthologies, Three Anthologies and Three Approaches - 1125 page views
Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice - 724 page views

I didn't write as many reviews in 2013 and after this point, the "long tail" has begun to merge into the initial burst of views.  The Goodkind and WoT books again were linked to on forums, with only Twitter retweets.  The three steampunk anthologies that I reviewed together got a lot of traffic from Portuguese and Brazilian Twitter and blog accounts.  The Leckie was discussed somewhat on Twitter, I think possibly because it was one of the few mixed/negative reviews.

Now for 2014 at a glance.  The numbers are lower, in part due to there not being as much time for SEO searches and the like to pick them up (when I crossposted most of these to Gogol's Overcoat, in some cases, the hits there were larger than here, likely due to more people finding them through Google searches).

2014:

Terry Goodkind, * Severed Souls - 352 page views
Jeff VanderMeer, * Annihilation - 311 page views
David Soares, * Palmas Para O Esquilo (Portuguese graphic novel) - 241 page views
Ian Cameron Esslemont, * Assail - 215 page views
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto - 210 page views
Clara Sánchez, Últimas noticias del paraíso (Spanish) - 193 page views
Rose Fox and Daniel José Elder (eds.), * Long Hidden (anthology) - 182 page views
VanderMeer, * Authority - 172 page views
Gabriel García Márquez, Cien años de soledad/One Hundred Years of Solitude - 172 page views
Chang-rae Lee, * On Such a Full Sea - 165 page views
García Márquez, La hojarasca/The Leaf Storm - 146 page views
Lev Grossman, * The Magician's Land - 146 page views
Andrzej Sapkowski, * Víbora/Viper (Spanish) - 102 page views

These are the 2014 reviews that have received more than 100 page views as of right now.  Most of the others are in the 40-99 page view range, likely hurt by the rapid number of reviews (106 to date, around 2 more tonight) pushing reviews off of RSS feeds (and my front page).  The Goodkind was linked to on Westeros, the Long Hidden anthology received many more retweets than usual for a review of mine, the VanderMeer books are fairly close together considering the first was posted on Westeros right after release and the other is buried in a link within that page.  The Gabo books are starting to draw more SEO hits, but this is moreso at Gogol's Overcoat (where the totals are nearly double for OHYS) than here.  The Grossman is shaping up to be on par with his other two (which were in the mid-hundreds) and the Sapkowski numbers are growing as well as more people seek out English-language reviews of this book.  And yes, there are many people curious about #fullcommunism and Premio Alfaguara winners, it seems.

So what to make of this data?  From what I've observed, with several grains of salt, that when it comes to reviews, people may click initially for a "hot new release," but for a lot of works, there is a "long tail" that develops long after the "buzz" has faded.  Based on the numbers for the epic fantasies I reviewed in groups in 2010, there is not enough statistical difference to argue that readers are not as interested in reviews of latter volumes.  But even more interesting is the seeming desire for reviews of "classic" works, whether they be realist or speculative fiction.  Faulkner in particular draws a lot of traffic for my reviews of his short stories and novels, both here and on Gogol's Overcoat, and I suspect part of it (beyond students trying to lift elements of my writing for their reports) is that people really want a discussion of something that they just read, even if it had been published decades ago.

Therefore, based on these small data points (which can be skewed by certain factors, as I alluded to above), it is strange to argue that there is a dying interest in multi-volume works, at least not without publishers' data (which they are loathe to reveal, for obvious reasons).  If I had to guess, I would say that there is a steady stream of "backlist" sales from a variety of authors not mentioned in Justin's article and that these often account for a healthy percentage of overall sales.  Perhaps the "long tail" isn't as flashy or as visible as the initial "buzz" comet, but it does contain quite a bit of material to analyze as well.

Thinking about taking up a José Saramago reading/review project for the coming years

I have several José Saramago works (poetry, prose, drama, essays) in Portuguese and Spanish translations that I have never reviewed.  I'm contemplating trying to locate, read, and possibly review in the future those major works of his (and some minor ones) that I haven't yet written about here.  This is going to be a links post where I can update the books read (possibly by language) as well as links to the reviews whenever I do write them.  This likely will be a years-long project, so don't expect me to rush out to go buy two dozen books now.  Anyways, the list (bold for works read):



Poetry

 Os poemas possiveis (in Spanish)

 Provavelmente alegria

 O ano de 1993

 Prose

Manual de Pintura e Caligrafia: romance

 Objecto quase

 Levantado do Chão: romance

Memorial do Convento: romance

 O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis: romance (also in Spanish)

 A jangada de pedra: romance (in Spanish)

 História do cerco de Lisboa: romance

 O evangelho segundo Jesus Cristo: romance (also in Spanish)

 Ensaio sobre a cegueira: romance (in Spanish)

Todos os nomes: romance (also in Spanish)

 Terra do Pecado : romance

O conto da Ilha Desconhecida / desenhos (in Spanish)

A caverna : romance. (in Spanish)

O homem duplicado : romance (also in Spanish)

 Ensaio sobre a Lucidez : romance (in Spanish)

As intermitências da morte : romance (in Spanish)

 As pequenas memórias (in Spanish)

 A Viagem do Elefante (in Spanish)

Caim : romance (in Spanish)

 Nas suas palavras / edição e selecção de Fernando Gómez Aguilera

 O silêncio da água

 Claraboia : romance


 Essays

Deste mundo e do outro

 A bagagem do viajante: crónicas

As opiniões que o DL teve

Os apontamentos: crónicas políticas

 Viagem a Portugal

 Folhas políticas : 1976-1998

 Discursos de Estocolmo


 Drama

A noite

 Que farei com este livro?

 A segunda vida de Francisco de Assis

 In nomine Dei

 Don Giovanni ou O dissoluto absolvido : teatro

 Diaries Cadernos de Lanzarote : diário. Vol. 1-5. (own part of it in Portuguese)

Some review plans for the rest of August

Although I've written over 80 reviews so far this year, I still have at least 60 more reviews to write if I'm going to meet my current goal of reviewing every book on this list and the eight Premio Alfaguara winners that I haven't already reviewed.  It is a daunting goal, but I do hope that by Christmas time it will be much easier than usual to assemble the various year-end Best of 2014 category posts, since there will already be written reviews of each book I want to laud.

Therefore, considering that there is only a few short weeks before the Booker Prize shortlist is announced, I would like to have read/reviewed the ones already released in the US by month's end.  That means reviewing works by Richard Powers, Karen Joy Fowler, Joshua Ferris, Niall Williams, and Paul Kingsnorth (to go with my already-posted review of Siri Hustvedt). 

I also want to "close down" the not-yet-reviewed titles contained in the link above, at least for January-April, and to have at least eight books per listed month reviewed by month's end.  In the next few hours, I'm going to review two July publications, Catherine Lacey's Nobody is Ever Missing and William T. Vollmann's Last Stories and Other Stories.  With luck, I will have reviewed a further 20 books, or just over one a day, by the 31st.

I have to rush to do this now because in the fall, my reading squirrels are going to want to spend more time gathering nuts and acorns and less time reading and reviewing for me.  But they are curious right now about all these squirrel references in the first 100 pages of Rachel Pollack's The Child Eater...

Do works hated in adolescence improve with age?

I was thinking the other day of three books that I read between 16-23 that I really despised at the time of reading them.  These books, listed below, were either high school Honors English assignments or was a book picked up because of frequent discussions in passing in college.  Now that I'm decades older, I wonder if I would have the same visceral dislike or if my reactions would be more tempered, if not reversed to something approaching praise for these works.  Might start this in a couple of weeks, once a few obligations are complete.  Here's the list:

Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding – read it when I was 16.  I remember my entire junior Honors English class despising this one.  One classmate even confessed that he cheered the death of one character because he was so sick of reading about him.

George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss – read it when I was 17.  While I enjoyed Silas Marner when we had to read it my sophomore year, I disliked this book so much that I believe I actually dropkicked my paperback copy across my bedroom.  Yes, I did do that.

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged – read when I had just finished grad school after years of hearing others talk about it in passing.  I recall finding myself appalled at several points, but I was by novel's end so benumbed that I can only vaguely recall what it was about.

So...any of these appear on any of your literary "hate" lists?  If so, why?