I’ve decided to start a regular end-of-the-month round-up post, to feature the 5 most popular posts each month.
So, for July 2007, the most-viewed posts were:
Through a Screen Darkly by Jeffrey Overstreet
The Book of Jane by Anne Dayton and May Vanderbilt
Books to Film (Booking Through Thursday)
The Harrowing by Alexandra Sokoloff
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Translated by Anthony Briggs)
You can view the most popular posts in any month by going to All The Books So Far and selecting a month. A list of popular posts will appear in the middle column, right underneath my little Bill Cosby story. Clicking on any of the categories in the right hand column will also show you the most popular posts in each column.
I have a feeling my main “Most Popular Posts” list isn’t going to change any time soon–those were the posts that happened to be on the front page on the 2 days when I got a traffic tsunami from Stumbleupon. I’m irked because that stupid Tad Williams book so does not deserve to be featured like that. Oh well.
Also, I’ve added a crazy tag cloud where you can browse all the authors I’ve read, as well as some other random taxonomic distinctions I’ve felt compelled to make, like why some books suck and deadly choices.
I just read your review of Through a Screen Darkly and it sounds really interesting (although I have challenged myself to put down my non-fiction cravings and read more fiction). I knew you had some film background, I just didn’t realize how extensive.
About being a jaded film-goer… I feel the same way, but I think there are two reasons. One – after studying film/screenwriting, I have less patience for flimsy plotlines, bad dialogue, cliche characters, etc. etc. I do find that friends of mine who aren’t in the business can set aside the critic better and enjoy the film. Wouldn’t this be true of anything, though? A trained musician would be less forgiving to a bad band or a trained visual artist more critical of visual art.
In addition, though, I think there are PLENTY of really great films out there, it’s just that the crappy hollywood money-makers have bigger marketing budgets. It’s getting really difficult for the indies to compete. Not that there aren’t bad indies or good Hollywood films, but you know what I mean. There’s this trend towards cookie cutter films that serve the lowest denominator. And it’s also a business and they know their largest demographic is 15-25 year old males. The “popcorn” crowd and I’m guessing you don’t go see things like JackAss The Movie.
I just saw a fabulous movie by Canadian Film-maker Sarah Polley (Away From Her) and I doubt anyone in the U.S. (other than festival goers) will ever see this film.
We are definitely kindred spirits. I totally agree with you.
I missed Away From Her, unfortunately, but the guys at Filmspotting loved it–that’s my favorite movie podcast, by far:
http://filmspotting.net
It was such a lovely film and so not what hollywood is putting out these days.
Thanks, thanks ALOT for yet another place to spend my time procrastinating.