Another review catch-up post and the first few of my 20 Books of Summer are coming up later this week. Before that … I’ve been saving up some funny follows and spam comments, as well as a couple of likes on Goodreads that were too apt not to share. I also always enjoy looking at the random searches that have led people to my blog. (Previously surveyed in May 2016, October 2016, June 2017, and July 2020.)
My blog has divine approval.
(I especially love the idea that I can find out “what he’s up to” by reading his blog.)
The right readers found my reviews.
Random searches:
July 29, 2020: shaun bythell anna, val howlett, ruth pavey, romance novel with a butler named bolt
September 15: meaning of ian love doreen, what is the meaning of the title clock dance?
October 24: rebel angels, shaun bythell wife, shaun bythell wedding, alison bechdel garfield grotesque human lips
November 20: ordinary planet comic, isabelle’s appearance in olive again
February 10, 2021: promise and fail soap by celestial church, review of the moon and sixpence, books less than 50 pages, winter soldier novel zimmer smoking pipe
March 24: one foot in the grave mr prosnett, employer and “silvie braun”, short poem about a black cat called scarlett
May 7: shaun bythell wedding, jessica fox shaun, who is shaun bythell wife, shaun bythell partner anna
May 13: illness is all in the mind
(So much enduring interest in Shaun Bythell’s love life!!)
Spam comments that made me laugh:
August 22, 2020: “Ranunculus, Wax Flowers, Combined Greenery.” (from “Get well soon cards with flowers”)
November 27: “Hi there mates, fastidious paragraph and nice urging commented here, I am truly enjoying by these.”
December 2: “hi, i am woo from Sweden and i want to explain any thing about “pandemic”. Please ask me 🙂”
March 2, 2021: “carrie underwood songs sad”
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 
I too still get the Shaun Bythell attention every day on the post for the second vol of his diaries gets pageviews, sometimes over 10! It’s the post that keeps giving.
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What particularly amuses me is that most of the interest seems to be centred on his personal life…
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Oh, I don’t do this kind of research, and I can see I’m missing out on lots of fun. Maybe if Jesuschrist starts following me I’ll get motivated 😉
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I wonder what makes people waste their time setting up daft accounts like that!
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Not enough to do … They should read more 😉
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Good work Vanessa and Judith! 🙂
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I don’t go around looking for reviews of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca … though I suppose I could! In a box over here I found my old paperback copy with a lurid potboiler-looking cover, so I’ll bring it back to reread sometime.
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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4045896015
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Ha ha, yes, good point. You should read that one! It was one of the nominees the year I was on the shadow panel for the ST Young Writer of the Year Award. I got to meet Sara Taylor at the readings event and we realized that we had been on the same study abroad program in Reading, just in different years.
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I wish my spam was that innocuous…. it usually assumes that I’m male and a certain part of my anatomy requires their attention…. :(((((
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Oh I get plenty of smut as well, but I just carry on past that and press Empty.
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For spam comments I’ve had a lot of thanks conveyed briefly in Spanish, in addition to the usual invitations to indulge in unnatural practices, but recently the posts have been more complimentary, even flattering, but still generic, and some are quite pathetic: “I am constantly searching online for ideas that can facilitate me.” I have visions of an unfacilitated and unfulfilled browser on their laptop or phone in some garret, and I’m almost persuaded to reach out to them…
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I used to get dozens of those “Muchas gracias…” comments a day. Now it’s calmed down to a handful a week. I’m told if one installs Jetpack these spam problems go away, but I don’t get any money from the blog and thus I don’t invest any money in it.
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Oh, these are brilliant! I am still getting hits on Chetan Bhagat’s Two States regularly and searches for it, too, rather oddly. On my work blog I had the rather alarming search term “transcribing one person with multiple thoghts”. Hm …
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I don’t think that’s a service you can help people with 😉
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Well it depends if they mean just a person with the average number of thoughts or someone with a multiple personality syndrome, I suppose. I’ve transcribed all sorts of folk so … but it was oddly put and bewildering!
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My spam blocker is obviously very strong because I get hardly any – compared to my family history blog which has about 50 a day, usually in Russian.
I had a look at the search terms and they are way more boring than yours. Lots of them have the title of the book followed by ‘revision notes’. If students are getting to my site thinking they’re going to get answers for their assignments, they’ll be mightily disappointed.
The most amusing search term I found was ‘where is Wales’. Now why would you visit a book blog to get that answered? Wouldn’t an atlas be more help???
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Anyone looking for a book title plus “summary” or a particular question is probably looking for essay help! And yes, they’d be disappointed with my reviews as well.
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My blogs on WordPress have Jetpack and Akismet (sp.?) for free, so I get to see virtually no spam. Sadly, it very rarely tells me the search terms, either. And my own search terms are rarely as complicated as yours, so I don’t keep track.
https://marketgardenreader.wordpress.com
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I presume that’s a paid-for account, though? I’ve only ever seen Jetpack for sale.
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No, I’m on a free plan. Maybe I’m spreading false information. It may be something they advertised to me so I often I thought I had it! I can’t find it at the moment on my phone.
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Let me know if you find any details on how to get it for free — I would take advantage for sure!
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You just install them. Free version, not pro. Mine are both unpaid as well. 🙂
But…you won’t have such easily accessible material as this for future blog posts!
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It looks like basic JetPack came free and automatically, but to upgrade I’d have to buy a business plan or pay for it.
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Akismet is PWYC for personal use and the updates are offered and applied through that management system like any other update; the free version for both is sufficient for me, but I’m glad that others and businesses are supporting them, cuz they’re good tools.
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Love it. Fun stuff. But whatever is a “fastidious paragraph”? Best of luck making Jesus happy with all your postings. Quite an audience there!
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I love the sentences that look like they were filtered through a thesaurus!
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So funny! I don’t see enough funny stuff come through on my blog, so I gave up looking a long time ago.
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You never know what you might find!
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