Farewelling 2011

This post is becoming an annual event  and so you may notice some similarities between this post and previous New Year's Eve ones.

Time to ring out the old year and welcome the new.
Where does time go?

MiP (MYSTERIES in PARADISE) will have been around for just on 4 years in a couple of days time.

I created it as the result of a resolution on New Year's Eve 2007.

Some statistical reflections.

• I've read 160 books this year, quite an increase over last year's 136, and bringing my total since I have begun to keep records (1975) to an even 3160 in the last 37 years.
  
• I've written 450 blog posts on MiP this year, an decrease of about 25% on last year. I reached some milestones: 500 book reviews added in 4 years, 2000 blog posts, and 7000 comments.
  
• According to my main counter about 85,000 visitors have come to my blog this year, still about 2,000 a week, but a bit of a drop from last year.
  I have installed a number of different counters this year and they all tell different stories. I guess it doesn't matter a tinker's curse really - the blog gives me great satisfaction to write.
  
• I dropped out of a couple of memes like Sunday Salon and Weekly Geeks mainly because there seemed to be so few crime fiction readers participating. However I have kept up with Friday's Forgotten Books and the Book Bloggers Review Carnival.
  
• I ran a couple of memes myself this year: the Crime Fiction Alphabet attracted a goodly number of participants each week, as did the shorter Crime Fiction on a Euro Pass. I'll run another round of the CFA at least in 2012.
  
• I also continued with my Agatha Christie Reading Challenge and the monthly Agatha Christie Blog Carnival 
  
• I've completed a number of reading challenges this year, and yesterday wrote a reflective post on what you get out of participation. I did worry that I had taken on too much, but I think it paid off, even if I did only get the final 2 books read this week. I thought that the challenges would help me out by reducing Mt. TBR but unfortunately it is still growing.

So if you are a visitor to my blog, regular or not, thanks for coming; and if you've left comments, thanks for the encouragement. I hope to hear again from you in the new year.

So farewell the old year with gusto, and think about those New Year's resolutions!

But please, if you drink, don't drive!