Short Stories, Irish literature, Classics, Modern Fiction, Contemporary Literary Fiction, The Japanese Novel, Post Colonial Asian Fiction, The Legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and quality Historical Novels are Among my Interests








Friday, January 1, 2016

The Reading Life Review - 2015 A Look Back


I offer my great thanks to Max u for the Amazon Gift Cards he provided me in 2015


In the long ago, Clifton Fadiman helped launch my reading life, I hope his daughter does not mind me using this wonderful quote.

As of this morning, The Reading Life has had 3,826,966 page views.  There are 2803 posts. I have 4116 Twitter followers.  The top home countries for visitors were The United States, The Philippines, India, Germany, France, The United Kingdom, the Ukraine, and the Netherlands.  By far the top visitor city of residence continues to be the Metro Manila area.  The top American state was California.  The top post of the year was on a short story about the impact of the partition of India on women, "Lajanti" by Raginder Singh Bedi, generating over 40,000 pages views  following the premier of a TV series inspired by the story.  My high one day readership was 41,612, the lowest was 852.

In 2015 I read for the first time short stories and novels by three writers i have added to my keep reading all my life list.  I also enjoyed reading excellent biographies of each of these writers that significantly increased my understanding of lives and work.





In March I devoted much of my reading to the Irish Short Story.


I am currently reading through the 91 works in Balzac's The Comedie Humaine, i have 17 to go


During German Literature Month I continued to read more of two old friends, Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth and greatly enjoyed my first two reads of Hans Fallada.



I am very into older Indian short stories.


Review Policy.

A big fringe benefit of book blogging is review books.  I only accept digital books for review.  If I accept a review book it means I am interesting in looking at it.


I am very into Yiddish literature and Holocaust related works.  

I thank all who have visited my blog.  I greatly appreciate all of the very insightful comments left by my wonderful readers.

I will soon a post on my hopes and plans for 2016

I am open to suggestions, joint ventures and to theme related guest posts.

Ambrosia Boussweau kindly agreed to become The European Director of The Reading Life.

Mel u

2 comments:

Suko said...

Happy New Year to you, your family, and your readers, Mel! Your blog stats are very impressive. I hope the year ahead continues to enrich your reading life. Thank you for visiting my book blog in 2015, and for all of your wonderful comments. They add a lot to my blog, and are appreciated.

Prashant C. Trikannad said...

Mel, hearty congratulations on another fantastic year of reading and reviewing books! Your numbers are astonishing and I hope they continue to rise in 2016. A very Happy New Year to you and your loved ones!