Avoiding lies and damned lies

What to do when you’re sick and you can’t concentrate enough to read or post? The other day my wife made some comment about stats on her business website so I poked around on pageviews on this blog. I was pleasantly surprised with what I found. It’s easy to tell what is being covered in some schools.

Make of these stats what you will. This blog is simply fleshed out thoughts on the notes I take while reading books, not meant to be anything fancy—rely on anything I post at your own peril. I’m toying with the idea of moving to my own domain in order to have more control, but with everything else going on at home and work that will have to wait.

Far and away the most visited are the posts on Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, receiving over 27,000 pageviews. The Histories by Herodotus is a distant second with almost 13,000. While the Iliad has over 7,000 pageviews, half of the visits are just on the Books 17 – 20 post. The Odyssey, in comparison, almost has 5,000.

Fiction has both expected and surprising stats. Kipling’s Kim has over 12,000 views and Eugene Onegin over 7,000. While Kafka’s The Metamorphosis has well over 4,000 pageviews, The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas has over 5,500. Most surprising to me, making me very happy, was over 6,000 visits to the posts on Pio Baroja’s books. It’s also nice to see Isaac Babel being covered somewhere, since I wouldn’t expect to see over 5,000 visits related to his stories. Posts on Petersburg and Parade’s End each had over 3,000 pageivews.

Two nonfiction books I was glad to see visited: Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard Miles has almost 6,000 pageviews while Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands is closing in on 5,000. In addition Virginia Woolf’s essays "Modern Fiction" and "How Should One Read a Book?” has almost 6,000 visits.

It’s clear that views have dropped with my recent emphasis on central- and eastern-European works as well as the many films I’ve posted on. I know they aren’t for everyone but I hope additional coverage on them helps expands their overall interest level. Now, on to Spanish Language Lit Month (see sidebar for links).