Ten Year Anniversary Special: By the numbers

We're celebrating the blog's ten year anniversary all month long, and this week we're taking a look at some raw numbers. Last week's anniversary post was timed to go live to the day on the ten year anniversary of the very first post on "A Series of (Un)Fortunate Reviews." But ten years today the first reviews were posted to the blog!

I took a look at some raw data recently to tally up the number of posts and reviews broken down by format. Content posted up to September 5, 2017, was included in the tallies. There were also a few posts that were single posts that contained reviews for two different titles. In these cases each of those reviews was tallied separately for the review numbers. So if you add up reviews, and it comes to a couple more than the total number of posts, this is why. Now. Let's take a look at the numbers!

Over the past ten years this blog has posted 422 posts. More recently I've made an effort to post a new review once a week. Sometimes there were two posts a week if I had content for a review as well as for a miscellaneous, non-review post.

What does this mean in terms of reviews by format or miscellaneous posts? It means hundreds of book reviews have been posted to the blog! 325 book reviews have been posted in a wide range of genres, including adult fiction, young adult fiction, juvenile fiction, non-fiction, and picturebooks. While the majority of the reviews have been of adult fiction books primarily in the genres thrillers/mysteries, "chick" lit, historical fiction, and literary fiction written by me (Ms. Angie), I have also reviewed some young adult fiction, juvenile fiction, and picturebook titles.

Over the years I've also welcomed at least three guest reviewers, the most recent of which is Miss Shayne who has been posting reviews for young adult fiction and movies fairly regularly over her school breaks. Other genres reviewed by me or other guest reviewers have included non-fiction, biographies, memoirs, and Christian fiction. There's an archive you can use to find past reviews going all the way back ten years by clicking the burger menu near the top right corner. Or you can search by title, author, or genre tag using the search function next to the burger menu.

Reviews for 58 movies, mini-series, and/or TV shows, reviewed by either me or Miss Shayne, have posted to the blog these past ten years as well as reviews for four music CD's. And there have been 37 miscellaneous posts. What's a miscellaneous post? While the past few years have focused nearly exclusively on content that reviews a title, earlier in the blog's life I also posted new arrivals lists of new titles in one of several of the library's collections. These miscellaneous posts also included links to other content posted to the library's Youtube channel as well as the Staff Picks posts that shared staff members' best of or favorite titles from the previous year. The Staff Picks series started in 2014 and will be in its fourth year this year!

Next week we'll take a closer look at some of reviews that have received a lot attention over the past ten years. And don't forget to hit us up in the comments! We love to hear from our readers.

--Ms. Angie

In The Woods by Tana French

"What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with the truth is fundamental, but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies ... and every variation on deception. The truth is the most desirable woman in the world and we are the most jealous lovers, reflexively denying anyone else the slightest glimpse of her. We betray her routinely ... This is my job ... What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this--two things: I crave truth. And I lie." opening lines of In The Woods chapter 1, pages 3-4 In The Woods by Tana French, an Irish writer, is an extremely well-written and well-crafted mystery novel. The downside is that this is French's debut novel, and her website (located at http://www.tanafrench.com/ ) does not off...

Broken by Karin Slaughter

Before I begin the formal review there are a few things I need to get off my chest in the wake of finishing this book; I'll do so without giving away too many (or any) spoilers. The OUTRAGE!: the identity of Detective Lena Adams' new beau; the low depths to which Grant County's interim chief has sunk and brought the police force down with him; agent Will Trent's wife, Angie's, sixth sense/nasty habit of reappearing in his life just when he's slipping away from her. Thank God for small miracles though because while Angie was certainly referred to during the book, the broad didn't make an appearance. One sign that I've become way too invested in these characters is that I'd like to employ John Connolly's odd pair of assassins, Louis and Angel, to contract out a hit on Angie; do you think Karin Slaughter and John Connolly could work out a special cross over? Hallelujah: Dr. Sara Linton and agent Will Trent are both back. There is no hallelujah fo...

Generation Kill by Evan Wright and One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick

Non-fiction books aren't really my thing; generally, this is how my relationship goes with non-fiction books: I see a really interesting one, I borrow it, I start to read it, and then I ditch it a chapter or two later when the dry, boring writing and non-existent plot fail to hook me. However, this a review of two non-fiction books that I read back to back after a five year old three article series that I dug up on the internet; it was written by Evan Wright and preceded his book Generation Kill , which is basically a book version of the article series that he wrote and published in Rolling Stone Magazine . Recently HBO adapted Generation Kill into a mini-series that ran sometime last year; I got the series on DVD and in the midst of watching it, I decided I wanted to get my hands on the book to read. In the meantime, I stumbled across One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick, the lieutenant of the platoon that Wright embedded with, and I read that book while I waited for Generation K...

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