LA LA IN THE LIBRARY: WEDNESDAY WHATNOT TWO - Odds and Ends #DogDaysOfSummer #DDOS

WEDNESDAY WHATNOT

TWO

Odds and Ends

I lost hold of Tuesday again and didn't get a Tell Me Tuesday posted, so here I am again with a Whatnot Wednesday.

I was loving this book until the author started using Native American theology as fantasy magic and cultural symbols, such as headress feathers, in Hoodoo charms. I scoured the internet looking for any connection to Native American heritage or culture she may have and came up with nothing. There are several half Native American characters, supposedly even the MC, but her grandfather was half Native American, so that means the MC is only an eighth Native American. The MC and her family live in Pennsylvania, and the grandparents in Massachusetts, but the indigenous groups they are supposed to be from, Apache and Seminole, are not in the Northeast. I also looked up a Navajo quote the author used, and it came from a book a White husband and wife openly crowd sourced on the internet, so I'm sure it's authentic. NOT! Then she used the term "savage indians," so that pretty much wraps up her indigenous Americans content. She is a Black author so she should know better. I still need to talk to a Native American author about this book. I tweeted about it, but so far no replies.

The verdict is after tracking my post views it's because of my non-book content. Which is a bit of a downer. Mary, from Dark Thoughts, said most of her blog's views come from non-bookish posts, too.

In fact, at this point my monthly views have basically doubled from what they have been the last three or four years. I think the 2,267 on the Witchy Wonderful Game Night is a record for me for a month's worth of views. I think previously it was around 1,800 on yet another non-bookish post.

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The 725 on my last Furs-day Feature was a big surprise because those posts usually only get 80-100 views. I got lucky jumping on the Stray game content.

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The Daily Goodie Box unboxings usually have around 800 views by the time I post the next month's unboxing.

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I really thought the Kondo 30 post would pull in more views than it did because it was something a little different.

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My Toadstone and Bumbershoot posts are what keep this blog afloat when I'm not posting much. They usually collect about 1K views in a month on average, mostly from my page followers on Facebook, but the nice thing about them is they keep gathering views over time; my book posts don't seem to do that. My very first T&B post from about five years ago still gets a fair amount of new hits each year on Back to Hogwarts Day. My Christmas season T&B post from last year has even been getting hits during the spring and summer months and is now at 3,194 views.

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I will say that as far as the game night post goes, that the extra 1K views came from Instagram and not the Facebook page. I have three more game night posts in the works: A Ghostly Game Night, a cat game night (give me some ideas for a catchy name, please), and a Harry Potter Game night.

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I've got the T&B Facebook page and my T&B blog posts linked up to Pinterest now, but I'm not seeing any action from that site. Everyone has been raving about the extra traffic it adds, so I must be doing something wrong. Ha ha.

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I would love to get my views up to where I could receive some free Harry Potter/Fantasy themed subscription boxes, or even one time items for review or giveaways.

Will this be the last year for my Dog Days of Summer Celebration? As you can see from the stats image above it's only had 61 views in three weeks. Last year was pretty dreadful, too. Only one person entered the giveaway.

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There's still time for you to read a book with a dog in it or on it (no picture books please), and enter the giveaway. You have until September 7th to get it reviewed on Goodreads, Instagram, or your blog.