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!

These Precious Days, by Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett is one our greatest living writers, and her novels have won copious awards. She is also prolific, and always seems to have a new novel in the works. However, when the pandemic took over our lives in 2020, Patchett realized that—like many of us— she did not have the mental bandwidth for an extended project, but she found solace in short memoirs and essays. Some of the selections in this volume have appeared in a different form in the past, but some are new, including the longest piece in the book, the title story.

Patchett’s topics vary widely, from a clear-eyed tribute to her three fathers—one biological and two stepfathers—to another generous piece about growing up with an exceptionally beautiful mother. There are references to becoming a bookstore owner, being inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and an address to the Association of Graduate School Deans. As a children’s librarian, I found her essay about reading Kate DiCamillo’s books to be especially heartwarming. It was like having two of my best friends meet for the first time and discover that they really like each other.

I read her piece about her husband’s exploits as a pilot out loud to my husband, and we both enjoyed it thoroughly. We both laughed at the funny parts, but I think I understood her distress about his safety more than David did. Her story entitled, “How Knitting Saved My Life. Twice,” hit a deep chord. She related how she had learned to knit as a child, but never appreciated it as much as when a close friend died recently. I learned to knit just a few years ago when I knit a blanket for my first grandson, who then died. My second project was an extravagant shawl for myself, far beyond my skills and with yarn I couldn’t afford. I made a mistake about halfway through and left it in, because there are some scars that never disappear. Knitting saved my life, too.

Ann Patchett is blessed with many good friends, and she writes funny and loving stories about them. Her title story relates how she came to know Tom Hanks, and how he later agreed to narrate the audiobook of her beautiful novel The Dutch House (reviewed here). Through a series of coincidences, Hanks’ assistant, Sookie, came to live with Ann and her physician husband in Nashville while she underwent clinical trials to treat pancreatic cancer just as the pandemic shut everything down. The memoir explores the discomfort of sharing spaces with a virtual stranger, the desire to do good when good is hard to discern, and the anguish of the terminally ill when they are forbidden to say goodbye to loved ones.

Although very little of this collection is about the pandemic, it is perfect reading when our thinking is scattered and we need books that don’t require an extended attention span. All of the pieces are written in Patchett’s exquisite style that won the PEN/Faulkner Award and made her a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Of course, if you’re tucked in for the winter, you can’t do better than The Dutch House, Bel Canto, State of Wonder, or any of her other brilliant novels.

Highly recommended.

Disclaimer: I read an advance reader copy of this book, which is now available to the public. Opinions expressed are solely my own and may not reflect those of my employer or anyone else.

The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett

Maeve and Danny Conroy sit in her car across the street from their childhood home. They smoke endless cigarettes as they reminisce, keeping their resentment of their stepmother alive and smoldering. Their father had bought the huge, glass-fronted house out of foreclosure after the original Dutch owners were gone. He had hoped that their mother would be thrilled with this surprise. She was not. She was so sickened by the idea of wealth and privilege that she left her two children with the servants, and a few years later Andrea showed up with her two daughters. Cyril Conroy was so busy with what had become his real estate empire that, in his kids’ opinion, he married her because it was easier than making her go away. Whether or not Andrea loved Cyril is debatable, but she certainly loved the Dutch House.

Patchett tells this tale in Danny’s voice. When their mother leaves, Maeve is eleven and Danny is four, so Maeve becomes all things in Danny’s world: mother, sister, friend. Maeve’s sudden sickness is diagnosed as juvenile diabetes in a day when syringes were boiled and insulin dosages were sketchy. Although their servants were kind, they could easily be dismissed, and so Danny stood on a brittle foundation every day of his young life: all of his caretakers could disappear in a blink. Central to his existence was their absurdly glorious home. The Dutch House was their shelter, their joy, and then later, their idol.

The Dutch House is the story of a brother and sister’s love that survives the betrayal of their parents, their divergent paths as adults, and the complications of other relationships. It is a story of revenge and a wisdom that takes a lifetime to arrive. Maeve and Danny are so different, and they often disagree with one another’s choices, but they allow one another to stretch the bonds to follow separate destinies. They are pulled back together by the house and their anger toward the woman inside.

Ann Patchett’s writing is superb, as always, and since I listened to the audiobook, Danny will always have Tom Hanks’ friendly voice. As a matter of fact, if you are able to listen to the book, it is a worthwhile experience. I am a character-driven reader, so living with the injustice of Danny’s life was emotional and engrossing. Maeve was a more difficult character, but the reader comes to realize that her chosen solitude allows her to nurse a gaping wound. The ending, in my opinion, is perfect, and I so, so want to live in the Dutch House.

Very highly recommended.

Disclaimer: I listened to a downloadable audiobook of this novel. Opinions expressed are solely my own and may not reflect those of my employer or anyone else.