THE ANNUAL REVIEW

by Rob Lopresti

Relax. It’s not your annual review. It’s mine.

Besides, I’m sure yours will go just fine. Hardly anyone noticed what you did at the office party. Really.

But this week marks two full years since James Lincoln Warren first gathered his small but intrepid band around him in the harsh and bitter winter of May in Los Angeles and promised us all fame and fortune if we would follow him into the pitiless virtual jungle of Blogistan.

Having sent that last paragraph off to the Home For Diseased Metaphors, let’s make a fresh start.

Cloud 2

Last year on the anniversary I used Tag Crowd to create an illustration of the fifty words I used most in a year of blog entries. You can see it here. And below is this year’s top fifty:

I’m pleased to note that the biggest word in each Crowd (meaning the word that appeared most often in my blog) is story. That’s what I think I’m writing about; I’m glad the stats back me up. Other words that show up both years include book, mystery, novel, and fiction.

But some words I scribbled about constantly in the first year vanished in Numero Dos. These include: library (one of the biggest words during the first year; it didn’t make the top fifty this time), reading, and university. Also, music, song, and autoharp. And death, murder, and tv (why do I put those three together?).

So if I didn’t write about those things, what took their place? How about people, man, guy, and John? I had to see which Johns were coming up in my column. John Floyd (of course), John Doe, John Collier, John le Carre, John Mortimer, John Drake, Mississippi John Hurt, John Phillip Sousa, John D. MacDonald, and on and on. Mystery Johns, musical johns, and possibly a euphenistic toilet or two.

A lot of adjectives hit the top fifty this year. But no adverbs, I’m happy to say. That would depress me.

The Top Five

I don’t know any way to know which of my columns are the most popular, but it is easy to see which produced the most comments. So, after subtracting my own comments (I can get quite chatty), here, in no particular order, are the five that caused the most chatter from you, the readers:

Tune That Name. About the importance of characters’ names, as illustrated by Velma getting mad about having her handle misspelled.

You Say You Want A Resolution. Promising to be a Better Person in 2009.

Your Story’s One True Name. How to choose a story title.

And Nothing But. About the importance of truth, and why fiction is a different kind of lie.

A Real-Life Phony Genuine Hollywood Spy Story. How the CIA helped the Canadians sneak Americans passed the Iranians, with a little help from the movies.

It’s probably not a coincidence that several of these columns come from weeks when all of us Briefers (Briefies? Brieferinos?) were writing on the same subject. You readers seem to enjoy it when we team up. Should
probably do more of that.

Good times, better times

Which brings me to the my major point. The greatest fun of this two year journey has been watching the developing community of bloggers and readers. I feel like I know a bunch of you pretty well, including ones I have never met.

Thank you so much for reading and participating and making this site one of the best in the mystery biz. And thank you for letting me be a part of it.