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!

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman

Eleanor Oliphant lives alone in her flat except for an impressive parrot plant named Polly. Eleanor has a steady job, two black skirts, five white blouses, and a pair of slacks for weekends. She wears sensible shoes, and she talks to her mummy every Wednesday evening for fifteen minutes.

Eleanor has an uncomfortable relationship with her co-workers, not least because she responds to their casual banter with deadpan, multi-syllabic pronouncements revealing her total incomprehension of pop culture. Vocabulary is her strong suit. She avoids social interaction until the day that she and Raymond, the IT guy, are both witnesses of an elderly gentleman’s collapse on the street. They stay with him until the ambulance arrives, and then begin a tentative friendship aided by the gentleman’s family, who insist that the two office workers saved their father’s life.

Raymond is ordinary in the way that Eleanor means to be, but misses. He wears frumpy clothes, smokes, and plays video games with his flatmates. He has a sweet mum who still lives in his childhood home and invites Eleanor to tea. Raymond does the washing up. He invites Eleanor to lunch at his favorite café in spite of her co-workers’ bullying, and Eleanor does her best to ignore the sound of his chewing. Her friendship with Raymond seems promising except for the fact that his mouth falls open every time he sees the old gentleman’s daughter, Laura, the spectacularly sexy hairdresser. No matter. Eleanor is currently pursuing a broodingly handsome local musician who is unaware of her existence.

Nothing is as simple as it seems, however. The reader has a growing awareness that Eleanor spends all of her energy plastering over the cracks in her façade. Every so often, a memory is triggered, and darkness creeps in through the white walls she has built all around her. Eleanor keeps to a rigid schedule that includes the daily crossword and three bottles of vodka every weekend. She never speaks to anyone outside of her workplace except for Mummy, and Eleanor’s mother is nothing like the sweet woman who raised Raymond. Oh, no. Mummy is vicious.

This engrossing novel presents as a contemporary slice-of-life story with perhaps a budding romance, but once the hints of darkness begin, the reader is eager to discover the next piece of the puzzle so that Eleanor’s life can be made whole. This stiff, standoffish woman is oddly endearing and vulnerable, and while we cheer on her efforts to find freedom, we are aware that the scar on her face is just a tiny reflection of the deep scars in her soul.

Set in Scotland, Gail Honeyman’s story places cozy teas, cats, and hearths disjointedly beside death metal, alcohol poisoning, and hatred. Her characters range from sweetly flawed to tragically damaged, and the reader grows to love them all. Honeyman exposes the dark secrets that are hidden every day in the most ordinary neighborhoods, as well as the inner cuts and wounds that everyone carefully bandages over, so that when we are asked, “How are you?” we can respond, “Fine. Completely fine.”

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.