Well, a year ago today this blog's first post went live. For years I had been finding these interesting books online and it seemed like a good way to share the information. There's already another two to three years of material bookmarked and I still find new things so I won't run out of subjects any time soon. In fact as more libraries start putting collections online the possibilities greatly increase, particularly in specialized fields.
Originally I had planned to post once every weekend but when starting thought it would be good to do a bunch of posts to build a bit of mass to the blog. Before long I settled on doing a new post every even-numbered day which is easier to remember than just every other day. To my surprise I've mostly managed to keep up that schedule (though I've missed a bit the past couple of weeks because it's busy at work).
Some of the responses have been a bit surprising. The two most popular posts (see below) were ones I didn't think anybody else would care about but clearly lots of somebodies did. An radio glossary called Radio Alphabet was given a physical reprint by the cool people at WFMU for a fund drive.
Everything I post is interesting to me in some way whether genuine value or just a fleeting comic nod. There's much less fiction than I originally anticipated because that has to be read in full while most of these books you can get a good idea from a chapter or two and skimming. Plus I have a noticeable weakness for reference books which don't even need that (though they often occupy me for much longer periods of time).
By far the most traffic comes from the U.S. but after that (with less than 10% of the U.S. total) is Russia, France, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Ukraine, Switzerland, Poland and Ireland. I have no idea if that's meaningful in any way and am not sure why Russia is number two.
As a bit of a recap here are two lists - the all-time most popular posts and then some of my personal favorites.
The Most Popular Posts
The Military Religious Orders of the Middle Ages
The Babees' Book
On the Writing of the Insane
The Lost City!
A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words
The Religion of the Samurai
A Bibliography of Unfinished Books in the English Language
Near Home, or, the Countries of Europe Described
The Pre-History of Aviation
What's Cooking, Uncle Sam?
A Few Personal Favorites
The Shakespeare Apocrypha
Dictionary of Sects, Heresies, Ecclesiastical Parties, and Schools of Religious Thought
Literary Forgeries
A Dictionary of Miracles
The Complete Stardust Collection
Insect-Musicians and Cricket Champions of China
Near Home, or, the Countries of Europe Described
The Legend of Longinus
Compendium Rarissimum Totius Artis Magicae
A Bibliography of Bibliography
The Lost Dauphin
But there's plenty more in the archives.....
