Quattuordecennial

Today marks the fourteenth anniversary of the founding of this blog, Confused Thoughts from the Northwest Corner. 

When I started it, George W. Bush was half-way through his second term, and Barack Obama was the junior Senator from Illinois, just two years into his first term.   I was still trying cases, and was almost a year and a half from retirement.  The Red Sox were just beginning the season that would propel them into the World Series, and to a 4-0 run to the MLB championship over Colorado.  And San Antonio won the NBA title over Cleveland, also 4-0. 

I had heard about folks writing blogs and thought I might as well give it a try.  I sort of groped around for a theme, and decided there would be none.  I'd just write whatever came to mind.  I figured it would keep my attention for only a month or so in any event.  Maybe write six or seven entries before moving on to some new interest.  And here we are, fourteen years and 1,378 posts later.

How did we do this year?  The year of the pandemic?  The pandemic and subsequent lock-downs had barely got under way a year ago, and they may have accounted for the prodigious number of posts.  From a low point of 62 posts in 2014, the quantity increased every year until last year I was bragging of a new, all time record of 112.  This year?  Yes, that would be 148 posts.  I can't vouch for their uniform quality, but I can assure you of the quantity.  I doubt if I'll ever come close to that number again.

So which posts seemed to excite my readership this past year?  As has been the trend for several years, variance from post to post has been small.  In general, there was a low readership during the spring of 2020, with readership then increasing until about Christmas.  Since then the numbers have been lower, but not much time has passed either.

In absolute numbers, there was a tie between two posts, neither of which I think was all that interesting.  One was my tongue-in-cheek comparison of bad natural phenomena we had been experiencing with the disasters predicted in the Book of Revelation.  The other was simply a summary of a streamed political lecture by UW professor David Domke.  Coming up hard on their heels, however, have been two posts from the past thirty days -- (1) a selection from my 1995 travel journal documenting my trek to the base of Everest with my nephew Denny, and (2) a celebration of my having completed my two Pfizer vaccinations.

What else attracted interest?  Reviews of two (2) rather moving books about the experiences of Iranian immigrants to the USA, and a review of a novel about the problems of being a high school over-achiever, desperate for Harvard admission. Also, my review of Mary McCarthy's memoir of her days as an intellectual young woman living in New York City, circa 1940.

Back in 2008, I commented that I didn't want my blog to become just a bunch of book reviews, but -- as you can see -- book reviews do sell.  And I really like writing them.  But I promise not to let them take over the blog.