Reaching 1000 reviews

This morning's review was the 1000th on the blog. I've just spent a little while looking at the stats - which given the day job I'm inclined to do. It's taken 502 weeks to reach 1,000 books (all reviews available here), which is pretty much spot-on averaging two books a week (1.99). The books total some 325,846 pages according to Goodreads (though a couple are missing page counts in their database), or just shy of 93 pages per day. Both of those seem about right, with some fluctuation across weeks and days.

Of the books, 883 were fiction and 117 non-fiction. 128 were by Irish authors. 166 were historical fiction set between 1930-1960. I bought nearly all of them, with a handful being review copies and a dozen or so gifts - I'm happy to make sure authors get some royalties and I don't want to feel obliged with respect to what I'm reading. I'll give a breakdown of location later in the week, but via the fiction I visited 75 countries, and a few more via non-fiction.

Here are some graphs from Goodreads (click to enlarge).

Books per year

Pages per year

Books per month

 

Pages per month

 

500th book review

My review of Anthony Quinn's fine novel, Disappeared, set in Northern Ireland, was the 500th review I've published on the blog since July 2009.  There's no doubt that the quality of my reading has improved since I started reviewing and I've read some wonderful books in recent years from all over the world.  This, to a large degree, has been because of the book blogging community through which I pick up recommendations.  My hope is that my own reviews have led to folks discovering some great writers and stories.  I've recently spent a bit of time organising the reviews on the site.  The tabs above provide links to all reviews, organised by country of setting, reviews of Irish authors, and stories set between 1930 and 1960 (which is a particular interest).

Top read book reviews of 2011

I thought it might be interesting to look at the most popular book reviews read on this blog in 2011 (not from when they were first published). Not unsurprisingly, the older posts feature more strongly given that they have had the longest to attract hits. The top 15 were:

The Builders by Frank McDonald (review posted Nov 2009)
Operation Napoleon by Arnadalur Indridson (review posted Oct 2010)
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (review posted Jan 2011)
I, The July by Mickey Spillane (review posted Nov 2010)
We Die Alone by David Howarth (review posted Dec 2010)
Miami Blues by Charles Willeford (review posted Feb 2011)
Field Grey by Philip Kerr (review posted Feb 2011)
Wild Blue by Stephen Ambrose (review posted Feb 2011)
Spitting on a Soldier's Grave by Robert Widders (review posted March 2011)
Cogan's Trade by George Higgins (review posted July 2010)
The Main by Trevanian (review posted Mar 2011)
Mercy by Jussi Adler-Olsen (review posted June 2011)
A Stone of the Heart by John Brady (review posted May 2011)
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson (review posted Jan 2011)
The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips (review posted Feb 2011)

The top two are also the reviews that have been most read since the blog started in July 2009.