Another Month in the Can!

Yesterday marked the end of our 19^th month on the web. That’s well over 500 posts in just over a year and a half. Thank you to all our regular, intermittent, and accidental readers. We hope you keep coming back for more. Above are the authors we’ve mentioned in the past 30 days, and below are the five most popular posts from that period:

• Practice Shelf Actualization this Summer— sincerely, Science
• The Tour (de France, in literature)
• What They Were Reading: Wallace Stegner
• Review:The Sea Is My Brother, by Jack Kerouac
• Don’t let me make you sad

And, as always, some of the many-splendored search terms that led people here:

• Delicate nostrils  >>  Madame Bovary had them
• Doesn’t W.B. Yeats look like Steve Martin?  >>   Yes. Yes he does.
• B-25 Mitchell crew armor  >>  In the nose with Captain Yodarian
• First line establishes character  >>  Well, yes. It certainly can.
• Voice of Rudyard Kipling  >>  Retiring bank clerk? sniveling apothecary?
• Art Garfunkel in sunglasses  >>  With sunglasses you might not see thedifference
• Lord Jim Analysis  >>  leads you here, or here, or maybe here
• Chris McCandless route Krakauer  >>  our first maps post
• Great white whale  >>  Mine was the great white whale himself
• Jane Eyre vs. Wuthering Heights  >>  The epic beatdown

Another Month in the Can

Today we pack up another month and throw it in the archives. Above are the authors we’ve covered this month, and below are the five most popular posts from that period:

• Profusion of Proverbs from Sancho Panza
• Review: Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
• The (Literal) Snows of Kilimanjaro
• Poet’s Corner: “Consolation” by Billy Collins
• Literary Product Placement

And of course, some of the great search terms that led folks here:

• Does Dirk Pitt have a  pet?   >> We don’t know, but here’s our ode to the adventure novel, the only place we've mentioned him.
• Plot Twist in Farewell to arms  >>  from the comments of this post
• Nelson Algren  >>  Our last Short Story Club Selection.
• At the cancer clinic  >>  Ted Koozer knocks it out of the park
• Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station  >> Yep. We've covered it.
• Milkman compared to lily owens  >>  In our Links to the Past post
• Around the world in 80 days airship  >>  THERE'S NO SUCH THING !!!
• Death of a traveling salesman eudora welty or arthur miller  >>  Answer: Welty
• Vinyl  >>   Another great poem
• Proust Memory  >>  Could be this piece or this piece.

Thanks for visiting. You’re welcome back any time.

Another Month in the Can

Over the weekend our staff worked to diligently put another month into the Shelf Actualization archives. Above are the authors covered in the past 30 days, and below are our 5 most popular posts from that period:

• A Ramling Riff on Rememberence in Swann’s Way
• Short Story Club: “How the Devil Came Down Division Street”
• Author Look-Alikes Vol. 13
• (Fictional) First Line Friday: Chuck Stone spy novel
• WhatThey Were Reading: Clive James

Finally, the nutty search terms that brought readers this way:

• Edward Hirsch  >>  A basketball poem for tourney time.
• Delta Wedding  >>  The review, or the Paul Simon lyrics
• How to write like Kerouac  >>  Easier than you would think
• White whale metaphor  >>  And a little Three Amigos for good measure
• Significance of the dog in vast hell  >>  Search me. But the story was good.
• Arthur miller and Eudora welty  >>  Was there a connection? Hmmm.
• How are they alike Grapes of Wrath and Cry the Beloved Country  >>  It's the intercalary chapters, stupid.
• Fictional geography  >>  That didn't end up being fictional
• Map of don quixote’s travels  >>  Ours are as good as anything out there.
• Is being unathletic bad?   >>  Well, it worked for Joyce.

Thanks for stopping by! You’re always welcome back.

Another month in the Can

Right about the time I was lamenting the latest “100 Best” list yesterday, this little website quietly stacked its 16^th month in the Shelf Actualization archives. With the average lifespan of a blog sitting right around two years, we promise to give it our best over the next 8 months or so before we shut it down.

Just kidding. (I hope.) Anyhoo, above are the authors we've covered lately. Now on to the 5 most popular posts from this past month:

• Number 2
• Conan the Literarian
• Paris, by Time Machine
• Review: Nemesis, by Philip Roth
• Jonathan Franzen on the Overrated and the Underappreciated

And the many-splendored search terms that led some of you here:

• Image of big merchant ship  >>  We’ve covered the merchant marine here
• Sperm whale habitat map  >>  So big it should’ve made Ahab’s quest harder
• Nanhsuchou  >>  The Good Earth, found!
• Boat that inspired old man and the sea  >>  Well, at least the harbor
• Huxley Smolarski  >>  A question of plagiarism, or just bad luck?
• Taller than Robert Wadlow  >>  Our ode to the short story
• Call me Ishmael Fourth Wall  >>  One way to open your own book
• The Punishment of X4  >>  Appropriate now that Mad Men is back
• Broken meats  >>  Shakespeare, the great hurler of insults
• Animal House where are they now  >>  An early post on Turgenev and Belushi

Thanks for stopping by. Keep coming back!

Another Month in the Can

Time to heave another month into the Shelf Actualization archives. Above are the authors we covered this month, and below are the five most popular posts from the last 30-ish days:

• What do Topper Harley and William Shakespeare have in common?
• Review: Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner
• Review: Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty
• Scratching the Surface
• If you love words, set them free

And, as always, the suspicious search terms that brought many of you here:

• New Yorker cartoons monet  >>  We talked Monet here
• Book club harrison Bergeron  >>  Book Club? No. Short Story Club? Yes.
• Amateur in closet  >>  The post where I came out
• Horse downhill   >>  From the pen of William Faulkner
• In defense of catcher in the rye  >>  Someone had to do it
• How to write like Kerouac  >>  The step-by-step guide
• Short pants and knee socks  >>  Nabokov, hanging out at HQ
• Taylor Schilling  >>  One of our Oscar Week movie posts
• Her quicksilver changes Didion  >>  Why I disliked Blue Nights
• Breathtaking prose  >>  Examined in one of our earliest posts

Thanks for coming by. Hope you keep coming back!

Another Month in the Can

We only covered about 20 different authors this month, but since we only post about twenty times in a month, that’s not too shabby- especially considering the huge, heaping helpings of Heller we heaved upon you. Here are the top 5 posts from the past thirty days:

• Slovene Literature, Geopolitics and Video Games, oh my!
• First Line Friday: Stage Directions
• Title Chase: Catch-22
• What Bugs Me Wednesday: The War on Style
• Le Mot Juste- Without a Thesaurus

And here, as usual, are some of the nutty search terms that led people to us:

“Death in Wuthering Heights”  >>  Well, we’ve done death of  Wuthering Heights

“Death in Brave New World”  >>  Um, we killed that one off, too

“Bosch garden of earthly delights”  >>  Enjoy a profound experience of art

“Man playing video games”  >>  We’ve done exactly three posts on video games.

“Sgt. Pepper’s Album”  >>  Why yes, of course we’ve covered that.

“Beast of Burden poem”  >>  I really hope the reader got something out of this parody poem

“edith newbold jones Wharton”  >>  Ah yes, our keeping up with the Joneses post.

“8-bit ham”  >>  How about the 8-bit Fitzgerald?

“Fiction town map coloring page” >>  Well, I guess you could use this for that.

“Modern library”  >>  The famous list that we sliced and diced here.

Thanks for visiting. Keep coming back!

Another Month in the Can

Tomorrow we close out another glorious month. Above are the authors we’ve talked about during that time, and here are the past month’s 5 most popular posts:

• Review :Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton
• Review: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, By Edgar Allen Poe
• Author Look-Alikes: Vol. 9
• What They Were Reading: Fun With Stereotypes
• The “Further” Adventures of Dean Moriarty

And, of course, the screwy search terms that lead people here:

• I hate catcher in the rye  >>  This person was probably irked to find that I don’t
• Into the wild map  >>  Chris MCandless aficionados often end up here
• Swamplandia reality  >>  The review of a lackluster Pulitzer finalist
• Miracle on 34^th Street Psychologist  >>  Looks like E.M. Forster
• Belle epoch paris  >>  We’ve touched on that here
• 1977 disco dancer  >>  Either this review, or this sample text
• Sperm whales habitat  >>  Not too big for Ahab
• Haiku on Christmas theme  >>  Probably not what they were expecting
• Old man in galoshes  >>  Ivan Doig and Old Man Marley
• 5 alpha reductase deficiency  >>  Jeffrey the Great

Another Month in the can!

Blink and you’ll miss it. We’ve been up and running for 13 months now. Above are the authors we’ve covered in the past month and below are the five most popular posts from that period:

• Wrestlemania: Roland Barthes vs. “Jeff”
• Faulkner in Hollywood
• Writers in the Lonely Hearts Club
• Georgia vs. Bama: the Lit Crit Catfight
• Books that take hold of you

And, as always, the crazy search terms that brought you here:

• Hobbies of Mitt Romney >>> Apparently weeding aint one of ‘em
• Phileas Fogg’s travel maps >>> Takes you here
• The head last horseman >>> Google doesn’t care you can’t spell
• Oulipo >>> Our only post on the subject
• Kurt Vonnegut Infantry >>> I busted a gut reading this
• Indiana Jones last crusade footage >>> Ahh, adventure novels!
• Photo of shelly duvall’s mother >>> Mmm, no. But Joyce Carol Oates, yes.
• Hemingway’s third wife >>> The HBO hagiography
• Axiom shelf >>> One way to start your book
• Mawwiage >>> My parents’ 50^th, again.

Another Month in the Can!

Well,  yesterday we threw another month in the archives- our twelfth month to be exact. Hard to believe we’ve been at this for a year already. We may do a  Year One Retrospective at some point this week, but for now, here are the five most popular posts from this last month:

• A Hollow Literary Adaptation
• What Bugs Me Wednesday: Deus ex Machina
• A Literary Basis for Trick-or-Treating
• An Ode to the Adventure Novel
• Causeor Effect

And of course, ten choice search terms that led people here:

• How to get an art sudonym  >>> We have the answer here.
• Hiring personnel for amundsen scott station >>> We cover one of the perks here.
• Dweam within a dweam >>> My parents inspire a James Joyce quote
• Daniel Faraday D.H. Lawrence >>> We’re not the only ones to see the resemblance
• Pet peeves poem >>> Or, a pet peeve about poems, anyway
• Sartre und bescemi >>> Another author look-alike
• It’s all been done before in art >>> We agree, in literature anyway
• Little blue books >>> Find out what they are, here.
• Great white whale metaphor >>> Mixed with The Three Amigos here.
• Obama’s writings >>> We analyzed his first lines here

Thanks for reading- And keep coming back!

Another month in the can

It’s been thirty more days, and in that period we’ve touched on roughly 50 authors. In case you missed them, here are our five most popular posts from last month:

• Poet’sCorner: Electrocuting an Elephant
• WhatBugs Me Wednesday: Fogg’s Non-existent Airship
• Review:Moby Dick
• FirstLine Friday: Setting
• SpeedReviewing

Plus a smattering of the unlikely search terms that brought readers to ShelfActualization.com:

• Billiard history >> History’s great writers playing billiards
• General gracia Jacques >> Led someone here
• Chris mcCandless journey  >> Takes you to this post
• Kerouac map >> Take you there again
• Jane eyre and wuthering heights >> this post pops up every month it seems
• Bald pale men >> Yep, literature’s got’em, too.
• Colorful Vermont  >>  Fall colors, courtesy of Washington Irving
• Hemingway and gellhorn  >> Leads you to this HBO review
• Queen Anne Period Art >> We covered this in a small way

Keep coming back!

Another Month in the Can

Well, we’ve knocked off another month, and covered veritable pantloads of authors in the last 30 days (see above.) Here are the five most popular posts from that time period:

• See India! Read a Novel!
• The Travel Narrative: In pictures
• The Quote Board: Books
• It’s all been done before… even the experimental stuff
• The movie was good, but the poem was better

And, as always, some of the most interesting search terms you people used to get here (along with the links to the relevant pages) :

• Smolarski honeymoon trip
• “I heard a great laugh” Kerouac
• Paris in the 2os
• Behind the wheel of a war ambulance
• Guy Montag
• Max Headroom
• Kurt Vonnegut Infantry
• Assonance Dr. Seuss
• Journal of pediatric endocrinology page 578
• African meadow HD

Thanks for coming around; we hope you keep coming back for more!

Another Month in the Can

We’ve seen our traffic take a slight dip in the past month. We can only hope it’s evidence that people are enjoying their summer instead of burning their eyes out surfing the information superhighway. To the rest of you, why don’t you go out and have some fun while the weather holds? Don’t worry, we’ll be here when you get back.

As usual, here are our five most popular posts from this past month:

An Inside Look at Shelf Actualization HQ

At the Bindary

What is Oulipo?

Bookish Nerd Bait Vol. 5

Bookish Nerd Bait Vol. 7

And the many-splendored search terms that led readers here:

Phillis Diller really big hair  >>>>  We've mentioned her once

John updike on the sidewalk  >>>>  I disagree with Updike here

Topless hemingway  >>>>  ...And Twain, Ginsberg and London

How does midnight in paris portray paris  >>>>  See here

To have and have not book  >>>>  The only Hemingway/Faulkner collaboration

Little Lizzy Mann  >>>>  Covered it here

Knut Jensen cyclist  >>>>  Our only cycling post so far

Guy frozen on dance floor  >>>>  This awesome post

The bee gees Saturday night fever album cover  >>>>  The same post again

From the first clang of the rail  >>>>  First Line Friday, Solzhenitsyn style

Another Month in the Can

Thanks for hanging out with us! Above are the authors we mentioned this past month, and here are the most popular posts from the same period:

• Hemingway and Gellhorn
• The Tour de France
• Review: Silas Marner, by George Eliot
• First Line Friday: Cry, the Beloved Country
• Bookish Nerd Bait Vol. 1

And of course, the wacky search terms that led some of you here:

• “On the Road mental illness”  >>>>  Diagnosing Dean Moriarty
• “Pronouns with no antecedent Faulkner”  >>>>  Faulkner & Pronoun Ambiguity
• “Egan system tension grip”  >>>>  takes you to Jennifer Egan
• “Barcelona gracia neighborhood”  >>>>  Tucker’s birth as a reader
• “Moby Dick seventh grade essay”  >>>> MacEvoy’s birth as a reader
• “Trivium down from the sky  >>>>  the only place we’ve used ‘trivium’
• “No pants required”  >>>>  Takes you to this post of the same title
• “lanza en astillero English translation”  >>>>  takes you here
• “Hate on the road Kerouac”  >>>>  shows you whyyou shouldn’t
• “two figures in a greek frieze”  >>>>  takes you to Mr.Faulkner

Another Month in the Books

Above are some of the authors we highlighted last month, and below are the most popular posts.

• The Links Post
• In Defense of the Books You Hate: On the Road
• The Writer’s Voice: James Joyce
• Faulkner and Pronoun Ambiguity
• Roberto Bolano’s “Summary Dialogue”

And, of course, the peculiar search terms that bring people to this corner of the web:

• "Nabokov Joyce photo": We believe this is the only one that exists.
• "Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel man carrying acorns": This Forster post.
• "Erri De Luca": Short Story Club selection for April.
• "Is King Solomon’s Mines a racist novel?": Talked about that here.
• "Gatsby Rolls Royce": Something sadly missing from this game.
• "Charlie Korsmo": We think he looks like Kafka.
• "Neal Cassady": Diagnosed as bi-polar, here.
• "Ernest Hemingway sockless": Ernest Hemingway + windsock
• "Shadow of the Wind": Could have gone here, or here.
• "Joseph Conrad": In his own words, here.

Keep coming back. And thanks as always for reading.