June 2018 Month-in-Review and Mid-Year-in-Review

June was another crazy month, even if I have no one but myself to blame.  no-angel continues to expand at a startling pace, we dragged a two-month-old halfway across the nation to visit family, I started back teaching, my wife went back to work, I continued my Tolkien 101 blog series, and I launched a new (intermittent) blog series, The Good, the Pulp, and the Superversive.  Oh, and I launching an entirely separate blog, Hillbilly Highways (check out my announcement post here).

Between all of that I didn’t get a lot of actual, you know, reading done.  I only finished two book.  Against all evidence, I have better hopes for July (although putting away The History of the Hobbit will go a long way toward freeing up valuable reading time).  I also did suffered majorly from the Bloggers’ Lament—my TBR grew in the wrong direction.  I got several books at a conference for cheap or free.  I also brought two boxes full of books home from my mom’s house.  (Hey, I went through five boxes.  Only walking away with two was a win.)  I didn’t even bother to try to list those books, but I plan on doing a #bookhaul post in the nearish future.

If you aren’t following Hillbilly Highways, I encourage you to do so.  I have been reblogging my Hillbilly Highways posts here, but I will stop doing that this month.  (I will use these month-in-review posts to highlight the top posts at Hillbilly Highways as well.)

I only managed to post two non-Tolkien reviews.  But I had a good blog month nonetheless.  After a very slow first half of the month (people traveling after the school year ended?), things really picked up in the second half of the month and I wound up having my second best blog month ever, measuring by views.

The end of June also marks the mid-way point for the year.  I am on pace for roughly a 50% bump in blog viewership over last year.  This is my 72^nd post in 2018, and I am on pace to publish more posts than any previous year.  But my words per post are down to just 532, off of my high of 798.5 in 2017 (reversing a trend of my posts getting longer).  I’ve read just 29 books read in 2018 so far, although 11,997 pages read isn’t quite as bad.  But, still, I am looking at my third-worst reading year in the last eight.  I blame no-angel.

no read only play

One thing that I am happy about is that I have been able to restore some balance to my reading habits.

 

Tolkien 101 (as of 6/28)

• The Animated Tolkien Movies
• Devin Brown’s Tolkien Biography
• Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy (extended editions)
• The Good, the Pulp, and the Superversive – J.R.R. Tolkien

 

Non-Tolkien Reviews

• Wrath of Empire by Brian McClellan (Gods of Blood and Powder #2)
• Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson (The Stormlight Archive #2.5)

 

Top 5 Blog Posts

• The Good, the Pulp, and the Superversive – Introduction
• Tolkien 101: Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy (extended editions)
• The Good, the Pulp, and the Superversive – J.R.R. Tolkien
• Tolkien 101: The Animated Tolkien Movies
• Announcing Hillbilly Highways: Country Noir, Hillbilly Studies, and Texas Country Blog

 

Hillbilly Highways aka “that other blog I run”

• Music Monday: Hillbilly Highway by Steve Earle
• Country Noir: One Foot in Eden by Ron Rash
• Music Monday: Down the River by Chris Knight
• Country Noir: The Outlaw Album by Daniel Woodrell
• Music Monday: This Cowboy’s Hat by Chris LeDoux
• Nonfiction: Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area by Harry M. Caudill
• Music Monday: Was It 26 by Chris Stapleton
• Country Noir: Savage Season by Joe Lansdale

 

Books acquired

• The Girl From Blind River by Gale Massey
• The Coroner by Jennifer Graeser Dornbush
• This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash
• Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American Indian Policy by Robert Owens
• Spiritual Enterprise: Doing Virtuous Business by Theodore Roosevelt Malloch
• The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Rodney Stark
• Entrepreneurial Life: The Path from Startup to Market Leader by Robert Luddy
• Makers of Christian Social Thought: Leo XIII and Abraham Kuyper on the Social Question, ed. by Jordan Ballor
• Flourishing Faith: A Baptist Primer on Work, Economics, and Civic Stewardship by Chad Brand
• Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty by Mustafa Akyol

 

Books started

• The Girl From Blind River by Gale Massey
• The Dragon Waiting by John M. Ford
• Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 by Charles Murray

 

Books finished

• Wrath of Empire by Brian McClellan
• The Girl From Blind River by Gale Massey