Saturday, March 05, 2016

My top 10 posts from the past 10 years

This month I'm celebrating Reading the Past's 10th anniversary, a nice milestone!

This had me curious about what the most popular posts out of 1145 in all have been over the past decade, according to Blogger's statistics.  Here they are:

#10:  The Boer War, Britain's Vietnam, a guest post by the late historical fiction author T. D. (Tim) Griggs about the last days of empire, comparing Britain in the late 1800s with America in the following century.

#9: A visual preview of the winter season: Downton Abbey readalike edition.  In November 2012, Downton Abbey's influence on historical novels was emerging.  This post contained blurbs for a dozen upcoming novels of interest to fans of the show.

#8:  Bestselling historical novels from 2009 looked at the top historical fiction sellers from that year, according to Publishers Weekly.  Unfortunately PW is longer producing these annual compilations.

#7:  Bestselling historical novels from 2011, the same thing for 2011.

#6: An updated post, which has almost no content in itself, other than a link to my historical fiction picks from BEA 2011.  It's odd this one ranks so highly, but it's probably because of the keywords used in it.

#5: A Puritan Maiden's Diary: The Early American Primary Source That Wasn't, an essay about discovering how a diary supposedly written by a teenage girl in 17th-century Rhode Island was actually a piece of historical fiction written in the late 19th century.  I reported the error to the Library of Congress, and it's since been taken out of their archive of primary sources recommended to teachers for use in the classroom.

#4: A report on Sarita Mandanna's novel Tiger Hills, which looked at this expansive saga set in Coorg in southern India between 1878 and WWII.

#3: The power of point of view, author Victoria Wilcox's guest essay about how she used different points of view to show the many facets of Doc Holliday's character, even ones that don't agree with our own moral values.

#2:  My 1000th blog post, another milestone post, which previews 10 new and upcoming historical novels that caught my interest in October 2014.

and

#1:  The Billy Sunday Snowstorm, author Barbara J. Taylor's guest post, written to mark the 100th anniversary (3/1/2014) of the time when charismatic preacher Billy Sunday was snowed in at his tabernacle overnight with many Scranton residents during an unexpected blizzard.  The snowstorm was featured in Barbara's debut novel Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night.  This post has been read nearly 29,000 times to date.

13 comments:

  1. Congratulations, Sarah, and best wishes for the next ten years! I love your blog.

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    1. Thanks, Clarissa, I really appreciate it!

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  2. WOW, Ten years! Congratulations on this milestone anniversary and I wish you ten more.

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    1. Thanks, Alex! It'll be interesting to see how the blogging world changes over the next 10 years. So many of our fellow bloggers have dropped out, conversations moving elsewhere, etc. I'm glad you and everyone here are still following along!

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  3. Congratulations, Sarah! Ten years! That's wonderful. Keep up the great work for the next ten years.

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    1. Thanks very much, Vicki! Hope I'll still have energy then. I don't want to think about how old I'll be :)

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  4. Happy 10th Anniversary! I've been making my way through your top ten posts and discovering more titles to add to my TBR pile. Looking forward to your next ten years of blogging.

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    1. Hi Yvonne, and thanks! I always enjoy reading your blog as well.

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  5. Happy Anniversary!! I always enjoy your posts, they make my TBR pile rise higher and higher.

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    1. Thanks - and I'm happy to hear that!

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  6. Many, many congratulations, Sarah!

    And you changed your header illustration! :)

    Love, C.

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    1. Thanks, C!

      And yes, just in the last couple of days! I figured it was a good time for a change. I debated changing the look of the whole blog but then got to thinking about how much work/time that would involve. But a new header image... that's doable. :)

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