6 Years of Blogging

A long time ago in a country far, far away, I started this blog. Well, six years ago around Halloween to be precise. My first “review” was of Richard Matheson’s haunted house story Hell House (1971). I read it as a “Halloween Read.” The book was okay; my review not so much. 😅 So, to celebrate six years of blogging I thought I would write about my most-viewed posts. Andreas over at the excellent book and story review site Reiszwolf inspired this post when he wrote about achieving 100K views. Now, I’m nowhere near that number of views but when you stop and think about it, any number of views is a wonderful achievement.

A few years back, I was talking to a friend about my WordPress site. He asked me how many daily views I was getting on average. When I told him “only five or six,” he said I should drop the “only.” The fact that people I’d never met and who didn’t know me were finding and reading (maybe) my reviews was something I should be proud of. Sometimes it takes someone else to open your eyes, as it were, to make you see something from a different perspective. We should all be proud of every single view we get on our sites. I am, so thank you!

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Okay, back to the topic. Here are my Top 10 most-viewed posts:

The Best Introduction to the Mountains (2001) by Gene Wolfe

I want to share this fascinating essay on J.R.R. Tolkien by the American writer Gene Wolfe. I am a fan of both writers and I think that this is one of the best essays about Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings I’ve ever read. I will post selected highlights from Wolfe’s essay, but I wholeheartedly recommend that you read the whole essay. There is a link to the essay at the end of this post. I hope you enjoy it and I’d love to hear your thoughts on what Wolfe wrote about Tolkien’s most famous books.

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The Doctor of Death Island (1978) by Gene Wolfe

“You mean I’ll live forever?” The thought was almost too great for him to grasp. Words in his mind became fleeting pictures of a hillside covered with long, sweet grass. A hillside smiling in the sun. Day always. No night ever.

In Gene Wolfe’s 1980 collection The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories, there are three tales which play with the words of the book’s title:

1. The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories
2. The Death of Doctor Island
3. The Doctor of Death Island

I read the first one last year and really enjoyed it. I haven’t read the second one yet. I’ve just finished reading the third one for my Short Story Tarot Challenge.

Cover art by Bruce Pennington

Brief Summary

Tracking Song (1975) by Gene Wolfe

‘I want to leave a record of what has happened to me, so that if someone comes for me, and finds me dead, he will understand.’

 

TRACKING SONG by Gene Wolfe was originally published in 1975. It first appeared in the anthology In the Wake of Man, which also featured stories by R.A. Lafferty and Walter F. Moudy. The story’s next appearance was in Wolfe’s own collection The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories (1980). It is 70 pages long. (You can find it here in issue #90 of Lightspeed Magazine.)

Cover art by Nick Aristovulos

Brief Summary
The protagonist of the story has lost his memory and his way. He wakes up in a wintry landscape after being found by a local tribe of animal-like humanoids. He cannot remember his own name nor where he is from. The tribe members call him “Cutthroat” due to a birthmark on his neck. They tell him they discovered his unconscious body in the snow after the ‘Great Sleigh’ had passed. What the Great Sleigh is, he also can’t recall. Cutthroat sets off on a journey to find the Great Sleigh, seeking answers to who he is and where he came from.

“Requiescat in Pace” Gene Wolfe, (1931~2019)

“I would like [my readers] to better understand human beings and human life as a result of having read [my] stories. I’d like them to feel that this was an experience that made things better for them and an experience that gave them hope.” – Gene Wolfe

I was very sad to read of the passing of the American science fiction and fantasy writer Gene Wolfe. I’d heard nothing about it until I saw this article on Tor.com. I’ve only read a couple of books by Wolfe and this is something I am determined to remedy. I just wish it hadn’t taken such upsetting news to push me into rediscovering his writing.