EatReadSleep is Ten Years Old!

On July 21, 2012, I posted my first blog post. I wasn’t even sure what a blog was at the time, and one of my first stories was about the death of my dryer. After a while, a friend of mine advised me that most people enjoy blogs with pictures, so I had to figure out how to take and transfer photos, and we were off to the races. Over the course of ten years, EatReadSleep has reached 141 countries, with many tens of thousands of readers, although the lack of enthusiasm in Greenland is tragic.

The country with the greatest number of hits, of course, is the United States, followed by Canada. Rounding out the top ten are, in order, Germany, United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, France, India, the Philippines, and Spain. As you can see, all of the European countries have logged in at some time, usually often, and in the last couple of months, a reader from Ireland often logs in before I wake up in the morning. I have regular Russian readers, and the People’s Republic of China has found ERS 27 times! Some of the interesting countries that have only found ERS once include St. Kitts & Nevis, Brunei, Yemen, New Caladonia, Curaçao, Zimbabwe, and Guernsey. I have really improved my geography skills!

EatReadSleep started out as an everything blog because I missed writing so much when I went to work fulltime as a librarian. Turns out that working full time and trying to keep up with the latest books made it impossible to write at any decent level, so I created a separate blog in 2016 called TheReaderWrites, but I rarely use it, unfortunately. After that, ERS became all about book reviews, which is a good thing, since I had started writing about politics in 2016 for some reason that we all know, and that’s just not good for my blood pressure. I will retire in a year or so, after which I hope to write more stories and memoirs on TRW.

TheReaderWrites lies fallow at the moment.

Are you dying to know which posts were the most popular? The first answer is disappointing from a data point of view: it’s just the home page and archives, which means people tuning in and just scrolling, which is awesome, actually. I’ve had tens of thousands of people doing just that. I have a confession to make: it was years before I knew to put individual URLs on the Facebook posts for each review. I just put the URL of the blog itself, so many of those Home Page/Archives hits are just from that! Hopefully, readers know how to use the search bar and are finding the posts they want.

As far as the most popular title, it’s surprising: Echo, by Pam Muñoz Ryan. I have a feeling that a lot of school librarians and teachers give out the web address to their students, not just for this children’s fiction title, but for many of them! Sometimes I seem to have a run on a particular children’s title for days on end. “Hm, thirty people read the review of Wishtree, by Katherine Applegate, today. Oh, and yesterday, too.” Of the top twenty posts, eleven of them are for children or teens. Four are spiritual books, and several are my own stories.

Blackmoor is one of the early Proper Romances by Shadow Mountain.

The third most popular post makes me laugh every time. I have had thousands of hits for the post “What Is a Proper Romance?” It is written about the Shadow Mountain adult series called Proper Romance, and I have searched their website fruitlessly to see if they have a link to EatReadSleep. I have no idea if people are truly looking for those books or if they are trying to inject virtue into their love lives or those of their teenagers, but I get at least a few reads of that 2015 piece every day.

As I noted above, before 2016, I had written posts that were not book reviews, and some of the most popular with readers and most important to me are the series of posts about my neighbors’ struggle to change North Carolina law concerning cannabidiol, the non-hallucinogenic oil from marijuana. Their daughter, Zora, has intractable epilepsy, and this natural drug had been shown to prevent seizures. I am happy to say that Zora is now a teenager and is living a much healthier life. Furthermore, North Carolina laws about medical marijuana continue to evolve.

Other popular non-book posts include my own— let’s say it— fabulous recipe for low-carb chocolate chip cookies and related cookbook and diet posts. The story about “Southern Guys and Knives” also gets regular hits all the time.

The Best of EatReadSleep series!!

While it is as impossible to choose my favorite pieces as it would be to choose your favorite children (I can’t relate; I have an only child), I want to put a few titles in each category, just for your entertainment and enlightenment. Sort of a “Best of EatReadSleep” so far. Today, we’ll start with adult fiction, with more genres in the coming weeks.

Favorite Adult Novels

Many Americans read mostly fiction, from thrillers to romances, but I have to know for sure that I will love a novel before I crack it open. This is not a problem, since I work in the selection department of a large library system, where I am bombarded by publisher marketing all day long. Plus, the adult fiction selector works just a few feet away, and she keeps us up to date.

Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell. My favorite novel of Spring, 2021

I can definitely say that in 2021, my two favorite novels were Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell, in the spring and Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr, in the fall. They were both phenomenal and entirely different from one another. This year, Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built is the best novel so far. Both Chambers and O’Farrell have new books coming out in the next couple of months, and I am looking forward to them. Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See should be on everyone’s “Books I Need to Read Before I Die” list.

Cloud Cuckoo Land was my favorite novel of Fall, 2021.

Here are some of my other favorite novels over the last few years, in no particular order. Links to the reviews are in the captions.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman. Absorbing with a twist. I do love a twist.

Lila (and others in the series), by Marilynne Robinson. Deep, deep, deep, and fine writing.

The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett. Listen to the audio read by Tom Hanks and read These Precious Days to find out how that happened.

The Personal Librarian and others by Marie Benedict. I’m a librarian, and I’ve been to this library, so of course, but Marie Benedict is bringing many women’s stories to life.

Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng. I can’t speak for the tv series, but this novel made me identify with someone who is nothing like me.

Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens. It’s been a bestseller ever since it came out for very good reason. Let’s hope the movie lives up to it. One of my lifetime favorites.

The Almost Sisters, by Joshilyn Jackson. Most people know her for Gods in Alabama, but I like this one so much more.

The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead. Historical fiction with a soupçon of scifi/fantasy.

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, by Grady Hendrix. I usually run away from horror novels, but this one had me laughing through my screams.

The Half-Drowned King and sequels, by Linnea Hartsuyker. This series is so underrated. It’s historical fiction, but if you like Game of Thrones, you will like Linnea Hartsuyker.

Uprooted and Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik. Classic fantasy. Grimm’s fairy tales for grownups.

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Stay tuned for more from “The Best of EatReadSleep”, including faith-based nonfiction, books for teens and kids, anti-racist reads, and more!

Haven, by Emma Donoghue

Three monks set sail in a boat. Thus begins Emma Donaghue’s intensely focused novel set in a religious community during the Dark Ages. Artt is a middle-aged giant of a man whose extreme piety and spiritual experiences set him apart as a saint. When he has a vision in the night, he wakes the abbot with a demand that he let him depart from the monastery for an uncharted island with two brother monks. Not just random men, though. He requires Cormac, a battle-scarred older man who is a recent convert, and young Trian, an innocent young monk whose childhood by the sea will prove invaluable.

Unquestioning obedience was assumed for clergy in those days, but eventually Cormac and Trian realize that Artt is not headed for a particular island, but rather he depends on the Lord to lead them to the right bit of land. After passing by every inhabited site they see, he pulls up on a rocky cliff of a place, with less than one inch of soil, covered with birds of every kind screaming and flapping. Cormac tries to grow vegetables, and when Trian is unable to catch many fish, Artt sets him to killing the birds for food. Artt does not want them to trade with other settlements, nor does he want them to build shelters for themselves, but he does want Trian to begin copying manuscripts for hours each day. Cormac and Trian silently repent for their own lack of faith when compared to this incredibly holy man.

Emma Donoghue wrote this quietly disturbing novel during the pandemic, and it is certainly a study of the effects of isolation on individuals and small communities. Although it is a fictional story, it is set on the actual island of Skellig Michael, a rocky island off the coast of Ireland that shows archeological traces of a small monastic settlement. Donoghue pursues a slow pace, with time to drill deeply into the inner world of each of these three very different men and to observe the struggle that Cormac and Trian endure as their lifelong beliefs crash into their dawning fear and horror.

One might think that fourteen hundred years would remove the reader from the emotions of the story, but history is replete with powerful leaders who have manipulated their followers into performing acts they would have abhorred just a few years earlier. Even in our own small lives, there are always authoritarian narcissists scheming to gain control over groups of willing admirers, and often we don’t wake up and break the spell before innocent people suffer.

Donoghue’s bestselling novel Room was about two people locked in a small shed. This novel is similarly claustrophobic and compelling, even though it takes place on an uninhabited island in the middle of the wild, wind-swept sea.

Disclaimer: I read an advance reader copy of this novel from @LittleBrown, which will be published on August 23, 2022. Opinions expressed are solely my own and may not reflect those of my employer or anyone else.

Look: I’m an Ecologist

Dorling Kindersley, better known as DK, is a wildly popular publisher with an emphasis on brilliant and colorful images with small bits of text scattered over the pages. Look: I’m an Ecologist is so stuffed full of fun projects that it will get even the most sedentary of little couch potatoes up and out the door.

Each double-page spread features one project, marked with “Adult Alert!” when there are scissors or other hazards required. They range from the familiar collecting leaves and sprouting seeds to making spider webs with sticks and strings. Most of the projects have suggested further steps, such as painting those leaves or decorating containers that the child made to house a collection. There are instructions for two types of bird feeders, one made with a peanut butter-covered pine cone, and then a more complicated feeder made with an empty bottle. Many of the projects will require time outdoors, but there are several rainy-day activities that will draw on past observation in nature, like a tide pool built in a shallow bowl. Perfect for that inevitable stormy day of the beach vacation.

This title is one of the “Look! I’m Learning!” series that offers Look: I’m a Cook and Look: I’m a Scientist, among others. All of the books have an upbeat and positive tone, with a focus on making children better at observing the world away from their screens. They encompass various learning styles, and the more academic child may enjoy keeping a weather journal or carefully painting the life cycle of the frog on a series of flat pebbles. There is something for everyone, all served up with no judgment and lots of fun.

Disclaimer: I read a library copy of this book. Opinions expressed are solely my own and may not reflect those of my employer or anyone else.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers

Dex is a tea monk. They travel from village to village, listening to people’s woes and offering them just the right cup of tea. Dex’s heartfelt goal, though, is to hear crickets chirp. Since the Great Agreement, when robots and humans separated after the robots gained consciousness in the Factory Age and perceived that they were being oppressed, humans had not ventured into the wilderness, and crickets are nearly extinct. Dex listens to recordings of crickets’ songs on their pocket computer, but it is not the same. One day, Dex cancels their appointments and turns the tea wagon toward uncharted territory, headed for the Hermitage, the last place crickets had been heard.

Mosscap stepped out of the woods, all seven feet of it, into the little campsite. Dex was taking an outdoor shower at the time, so this first contact between a robot and a human was even more disconcerting than it could have been. Mosscap has been sent to see how the humans are doing after all these years, and it is delighted to accompany Dex to the Hermitage, even though it has absolutely not been invited, especially because it asks endless questions.

This charming little story is unexpectedly deep. While Dex is searching for the meaning of life, the robot is questioning all of their habits and decisions, which forces Dex to think about things they have always taken for granted. The world-building is unique, taking place on an earth-like moon called Panga with a pantheon of gods being worshipped by various harmonious groups. Although it is somewhat post-apocalyptic, it is not bleak. Rather, humans have returned to a simpler life with low-tech, hands-on jobs enhanced with tiny technology, such as solar panels, personal water filtration tanks, and pocket computers that last for years. The culture is an almost utopian idea of what we could be if we abandoned the insane desperation of our consumerist addiction.

The pronoun for nonbinary, restless Dex is “they,” while the pronoun for nonhuman, cheerful Mosscap is “it.” The singular use of a plural pronoun still trips up this former grammar teacher, and I do wish that we could come up with a completely different alternative that won’t send me searching back through the paragraph to find the other people.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built is unlike anything you’ve read before. The tone is quietly joyful and sweet, and I knew that I had to read it as soon as I heard about tea monks. At 160 pages, it just begins to whet the appetite, so I am pleased to see that Becky Chambers has a sequel coming out in July called A Prayer for the Crown-Shy. I am already on the holds list.

Highly recommended.

Disclaimer: I read a library copy of this book. Opinions expressed are solely my own and may not reflect those of my employer or anyone else. @tordotcom