The end of May marked the four year blogiversary of Every Day Should Be Tuesday, and today marks the one year blogiversary of Hillbilly Highways, both of which deserve posts of their own. May was my second-best month ever at Every Day Should Be Tuesday for views, buoyed by Game of Thrones recaps. It was a slow month at Hillbilly Highways (unsurprising since I missed a couple Music Monday posts), but Hillbilly Highways is still running 25% ahead of where Every Day Should Be Tuesday was at this point.
I paced myself in May, only publishing seventeen posts. I am proud of myself, though, for publishing seven reviews (admittedly, three were old reviews dusted off and polished up). My Game of Thrones recaps were so successful I had to split them out from the rest of my posts for my “top 5”. Views grew over the course of the season, but it is interesting to note there was a spike for episode 3 and episode 5. Over at Hillbilly Highways, SF reviews continue to perform best, which is unsurprising considering my existing SF audience.
I read and watched and posted on a lot of fantasy in May, but I am disappointed in myself for not actively participating in Wyrd & Wonder. I am still planning to embark on a reread of The Wheel of Time, but I feel like I need a palate cleanser after Game of Thrones. I am thinking I will finally crack open my copy of Malice by John Gwynne.
It was a hectic month, if one amenable to reading, because I spent the beginning of it traveling (expectedly) and the end of it traveling (unexpectedly). So instead of a baby pic you get a picture of my early morning and late evening reading view from my second trip.
All of that extra time to read was good, because I am adding a new feature to my month-in-review posts: a Mount TBR Counter. Books acquired make it go up. Books read (for the first time) make it go down. I did a little back-of-the-envelope math a while back and figured that it would take me roughly seven years to read every book I own and haven’t read . . . if I acquire zero new books in the interim. I am, generally speaking, okay with acquiring more books than I read and with owning plenty of unread books (options!), but it is getting entirely out of hand.
Aaaand I didn’t make a great start of things. I went a little crazy acquiring books, but for good reason. I took advantage of my first trip to buy four books by local authors (two 
signed), I bought two very fancy books as a long since promised reward to myself, and I had planned to read the John Tyler biography in May since I made my New Year’s Bookish Resolutions, in addition to the books I acquired for the more usual reasons. I actually acquired all ten books in the first half of the month. Book acquisition abstinence and a strong end to the month while I was at my mom’s house allowed me to narrowly squeak out a -1 for my TBR change counter for the month. I am still sitting at +4 year-to-date, though, and even after reading 11 books in May I am sitting at a paltry 31 for the year. Why am I such a failure relative to first grade me?
May Reviews
- A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin
- To Live Here, You Have to Fight: How Women Led Appalachian Movements for Social Justice by Jessica Wilkerson (Hillbilly Highways)
- A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
- Houston Noir, edited by Gwendolyn Zepeda (Hillbilly Highways)
- Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide by Tony Horwitz (Hillbilly Highways)
- The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane by Robert E. Howard
- Who Fears the Devil? by Manly Wade Wellman (Hillbilly Highways)
Game of Thrones Recap and Reaction Posts
Top 5 Posts at Every Day Should Be Tuesday (not including my GoT recaps)
- The Traitor Son Cycle is the Perfect Hair of the Dog for your Game of Thrones Hangover
- Throwback SF: The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane by Robert E. Howard
- Revisiting George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire: A Dance with Dragons
- Revisiting George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire: A Feast for Crows
- April 2019 Month-in-Review
Top 5 Posts at Hillbilly Highways
- SF: Who Fears the Devil? by Manly Wade Wellman
- Fiction: Houston Noir, edited by Gwendolyn Zepeda
- Nonfiction: Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide by Tony Horwitz
- Music Monday: Gone to Carolina by Shooter Jennings
- Nonfiction: To Live Here, You Have to Fight: How Women Led Appalachian Movements for Social Justice by Jessica Wilkerson by Jessica Wilkerson
Books acquired
- Where All Light Tends to Go by David Joy
- A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash
- Saints at the River by Ron Rash
- Something Rich and Strange: Selected Stories by Ron Rash
- Queen of the Martian Catacombs by Leigh Brackett
- Houston Noir, ed. by Gwendolyn Zepeda (review copy)
- John Tyler: The American Presidents Series: The 10th President, 1841-1845 by Gary May
- The Spirit of the Common Law & Other Writings by Roscoe Pound
- Law and the Modern Mind by Jerome Frank
- Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide by Tony Horwitz
Books started
- Raid by K.S. Merbeth
- John Tyler: The American Presidents Series: The 10th President, 1841-1845 by Gary May
- Houston Noir, edited by Gwendolyn Zepeda
- Mum’s the Word for Murder by Brett Halliday
- Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide by Tony Horwitz
- The True Queen by Zen Cho
- Corporations Are People Too (And They Should Act Like It) by Kent Greenfield
- Crowfall by Ed McDonald
- The Judiciary’s Class War by Glenn Harlan Reynolds
Books finished
- Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia
- Raid by K.S. Merbeth
- John Tyler: The American Presidents Series: The 10th President, 1841-1845 by Gary May
- Houston Noir, edited by Gwendolyn Zepeda
- Mum’s the Word for Murder by Brett Halliday
- Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide by Tony Horwitz
- The True Queen by Zen Cho
- Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick
- Where All Light Tends to Go by David Joy
- Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy, edited by Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll
- The Judiciary’s Class War by Glenn Harlan Reynolds
Mount TBR Counter
- May: -1
- Year-to-day: +4
Every Day Should Be Tuesday 
Reblogged this on Hillbilly Highways and commented:
Check out the top posts across both blogs and see what I have been reading. May’s Month-in-Review:
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Ok, lots to digest here.
First, congrats on the 4 years! I’d say congrats on the 1 year, but I don’t care about that site, so no congrats. You only get ONE congrats.
Second. If you want a palate cleanser from GoT but aren’t ready for WoT, Malice is NOT the way to go. Gwynne isn’t as good a storyteller as Jordan nor as good a writer as Martin. I had a really bad reaction to Malice though, so take it all with a grain of salt.
Finally, are we going to get a review of MHI? If not, could you give me a one paragraph sumup of what you thought of it?
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I will review MHI, although I’ve built up a pretty good backlog at this point.
I also read his Grimnoir Chronicles, and he has definitely gotten better as a writer since he penned MHI. Owen can be a little Mary Sue-y, especially at first. And the gun porn is tedious, if understandable given the book started out being serialized on a gun forum. The first part of the book has a show, don’t tell problem I associate with writers not yet confident in their storytelling. But this is mostly a problem with the first part of the book, and he is already great at set pieces and worldbuilding (as with the Grimnoir books, Correia surprises me with killer epic fantasy underpinnings I wasn’t expecting in an urban fantasy).
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Yeah, when I initially read MHI I only gave it 3 stars. thankfully the gun porn has really dropped in later books.
Grimnioir is probably my favorite series by him. I’ve heard he’s got another trilogy kicking around in the back of his head, but with all the other writing he does, I wonder when that’ll ever see the light of day.
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Well done on the anniversary and all the reviews!
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