Yesterday, as per my tradition, I posted my annual Reading highlights, which means tonight it’s time for my Blogging highlights. This is of more interest to me, really, but being a librarian/archivist by training I love to keep records and my blog is the best place to keep my blogging records – duh!
My main highlight for this year is one I let slip by, which is that August marked 15 years of writing my weekly Monday Musings posts. I published my first one on 9 August 2010, and never expected to be still blogging now, let alone writing those Musings. My closest post to that anniversary went live on Monday 11 August, and was no. 753. They can be a challenge at times, and some are pretty thin, but I enjoy writing them and love the conversations many of them engender. My post on The lost child motif (February 2011) which has been in my annual top three Monday Musings for some time, fell this year to 6th, but it is still my top Monday Musings of all time.
Anyhow, onto some specific highlights …
Top posts for 2025
Do you keep an eye on which posts of yours get the most hits? I’m particularly love seeing which of my review posts (that is, excluding Monday Musings, event and meme posts) attract visitors. Here is this year’s top ten:
- Claire Keegan, So late in the day (December 2023, Irish): retained top spot
- Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard devotional (June 2024, Australian): jumped up from 7th last year
- Richard Flanagan, Question 7 (March 2024, Australian): jumped up one, from 4th last year
- Jane Caro, The mother (September 2024, Australian): new to the top ten
- Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead (February 2024, American): slipped from 3rd last year
- Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge (June 2025, American): new to the top ten
- Shirley Jackson, “The lottery” (October 2021, American): new to the top ten
- Michelle de Kretser, Theory & practice (May 2025, Australian/Sri Lankan): new to the top ten
- Evelyn Araluen, Dropbear (July 2022, Australian/First Nations): new to the top ten
- Ernest Hemingway, “Cat in the rain” (September 2022, American): slipped from 2nd last year
Observations:
The last couple of years have seen quite a change in my Top Ten. For many years, older posts dominated my Top Ten, but in recent years there’s been a gradual shift to more of my newer posts taking top honours. This continued in 2025. Why, I wonder? The result is that my longterm serial Top Tenners (Jack London, Barbara Baynton, and Mark Twain) are absent again. In fact, this year’s oldest Top Ten post dates to October 2021 (Shirley Jackson’s “The lottery”).
There is always something to surprise me. This year it is Jane Caro’s The mother. It wasn’t an award-winner, and I don’t hear it mentioned much, but its coercive control subject is right in the zeitgeist, and its powerful response to that issue clearly continues to capture attention. Also interesting is the steady rise up the list of my post on Evelyn Araluen’s Dropbear, due largely I suspect to its being a set text. How encouraging that a contemporary work of First Nations poetry is a set text.
I also like to see how the posts written in the year fare, so here are the Top Ten 2025-published posts (again excluding Monday Musings, event and meme posts):
- Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge (June 2025, American)
- Michelle de Kretser, Theory & practice (May 2025, Sri Lankan Australian)
- Helen Garner, The season (April 2025, Australian)
- Olga Tokarczuk, House of day, house of night (October 2025, Polish)
- Melanie Cheng, The burrow (February 2025, Australian)
- Shelley Burr, Vanish (May 2025, Australian)
- Winnie Dunn, Dirt poor islanders (July 2025, Tongan Australian)
- Percival Everett, James (June 2025, Black American)
- Andra Putnis, Stories my grandmothers didn’t tell me (February 2025, Australian)
- Gideon Haigh, My brother Jaz (January 2025, Australian)
My most popular Monday Musings posts also saw a change, with last year’s third place, First Nations short story collections (July 2024), taking top spot this year, and the current year’s version of Some new releases dropping to second after a stranglehold at the top for a few years. Third place goes to literary Magandjin/Brisbane (September 2024).
Random blogging stats
The searches
It looks like Jetpack has dropped reporting on search terms altogether, which makes me sad, but it will keep this post a bit shorter!
Other stats
2025 was another quiet year for me post-wise. I wrote fewer posts than ever before, just 130, which is well under my long term average of 151. However, my overall hits for the year were only a little under last year’s significant jump and 24% ahead of 2023’s figures.
The top six countries visiting my blog changed a little. The top three were the same – Australia (37% versus last year’s 46%), the USA (22%, same as last year), and the United Kingdom – but then China, which was just out of last year’s Top Ten, popped in at fourth, followed by last year’s next group, India, Canada, and the Philippines, and then New Zealand, Germany and Ireland. Thankfully, I didn’t have the spamming/AI bot scraping that Brona had.
I first reported on Clicks last year. These tell which sites (and posts) visitors clicked on from my posts. They tell us something about how people (other bloggers and readers) engage with our posts, and about the blogging community. My most clicked on links are Wikipedia, my own blog and images within it, but here are the top 5 blogs clicked on from mine, plus their most clicked link:
- ANZLitLovers: Tony Birch’s Common people
- Brona’s Books (This Reading Life): Andrew O’Hagan’s Caledonian Road
- Reading Matters: Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard devotional
- The Australian Legend: Australian white man, 1788-1950s
- Jonathan Shaw (Me Fail? I Fly!): On Caledonian Road with the book club
Caledonian Road was clearly a big hit last year!
Challenges, memes, et al
There is no real change from last year. I continued to do my one regular meme, Kate’s (booksaremyfavouriteandbest) #sixdegreesofseparation (but did not do any others in 2025). And I took part, to some degree, in Nonfiction November (multiple bloggers), Novellas in November (Cathy of 746 books and Rebecca of Bookish Beck), the #YEAR Club (Kaggsy’s Bookish Rambling and Simon’s Stuck in a Book), and Buried in Print’s MARM. Most of these can be found via my “Reading weeks/months/years” category.
I value the structured opportunity these provide for us to explore writers and works we might otherwise not get to. I’d love to do more, but, well, I whinge enough so will say no more …
And so, on to 2026 …
Once again thanks to all of you who commented on my blog this year – my wonderful regulars and the newbies who gave me a shot. I love those of you who comment – regularly or occasionally – and thank you for engaging so positively. Posts can’t cover everything, so I enjoy it when comments tease out other ideas. I also love being encouraged to clarify my ideas and thinking. But, thank you too to the lurkers. Your interest and support is also greatly appreciated, even if I don’t know who you are.
I also want to thank all you hardworking bloggers out there. Again I’ve been a less regular commenter on your blogs than I’d like to, and it saddens me. My life has changed quite dramatically over the last five years, and I’m still working out how to manage my new lifestyle, and balance new and old commitments. I enjoy reading your posts when I can. I hope to read more, and engage in more book talk in 2026.
Finally, as always, big thanks to the authors, publishers and booksellers who make it all possible.
Roll on 2026 … and Happy New Year everyone.
Whispering Gums 
“It looks like Jetpack has dropped reporting on search terms” – like, I’m soooo surprised. Not. This seems to’ve been a year wherein Automattic was determined to change stuff and did so – mostly without warning, as your remark shows.
For someone like you with a long, uninterrupted history of utilising their services and paying for them, I would expect better provision of same. Tant pis pour moi – et pour toi, ma chère ST …
Thanks for you support MR! I agree with much of what you say here, except that in this case it’s not surprising because for many years Google, and maybe some other search engines, have not been revealing search terms. A privacy thing? Though we never knew who was searching. Anyhow, it’s meant for some years that the ones I’ve been seeing have been a very small percentage of the total. It’s been disappointing for some time and nothing to do either WP or its services.
Cette fois j’ai tort, voilà. Merde. [grin]
Tu n’as pas complètement tort. They do change things willy nilly. I’m always trying to find things!
Thanks for sharing your highlights.
Wishing you a very happy new year!
And you too Shelleyrae. Thanks!
The Australian Legend is a stats free zone as of 2025. I didn’t feel I was gaining anything by keeping count.
A blogging highlight: following up your research (your 1925 post) to read what might have been Australia’s first SF novel, Out of the Silence by Erle Cox
I understand that stats-free business, Bill. I’m not sure what there is to gain either, but I like stats for some reason!
I did love finding that book as I knew you’d be interested – even if it turned out to be problematic.
I wonder if Question 7 moved up your list this year because it was published in the US? I read it earlier this year, and wow, what an amazing book! That is so sad search terms aren’t tracked anymore! That has always been one of my favorite parts of your annual stats.
You had a wonderful year of books and blogging with a big milestone too! I hope many good books and bookish events come your way in 2026!
I find it interesting that you shared fewer posts this year because I feel like there is always something in my inbox from you! Maybe that’s not a bad thing, then, to take it easy, as you certainly are still producing a lot of writing and conversation.
As for China joining your top countries, I noticed not too long ago—maybe a month or two??—I’ve had THOUSANDS of views from China. I’m assuming it’s a spam bot of some sort, but I never know. It correlated with me sharing my blog in my job’s recent newsletter meant to share employees’ small “businesses.”
Lastly, please remind me what changed for you in the last five years that has you adjusting to life? Was that when you sold your house? I thought that was more recently….
Amusingly, Demon Copperhead was also my fifth most viewed book review last year! How odd is that! I get a lot from China on my work blog, but it is on topics that are useful for students, on referencing, Word styles and the like, so I think they’re legit, though who really knows. Happy reading and blogging in 2026 and thank you for all you post!
Haha, love that Liz!
As you say, who knows, but I think mine were generally legit too, because there was no out-of-whack spike like Brona got (thousands and thousands a day).
Happy reading and blogging to you too in 2026. I hope to visit everyone more this year. Famous last words? I hope not.
It has been about 10 days now but the HUGE spike in views has suddenly stopped. I almost miss those dizzy-inducing numbers now that I’m back to 300 views a day 😀
Haha – Brona. I understand that! Still, though, I’m hoping you took one for the team and it will not happen to me!!!
And hopefully what it shows is that it will eventually pass if it does happen to anyone else!
Yes … and thanks for sharing that experience too too!!!
Demon Copperhead was one of the books heavily targetted during my bot scraping event, although the top review post from this time was Elizabeth Strout’s Tell Me Everything. Mishima’s The Sound of Waves was the third highest hit and is the only one that is still being viewed this past week in any numbers now that the numbers have dropped back to ‘normal’.
You may not be posting as much, but you always produce quality stuff, so it’s worth waiting for 🙂
HNY and hope you can find more reading time this year.
Fascinating … that’s a stat you could have shared? Even if it’s AI scraping I guess it tells us something?
And thanks for boosting my morale! Perhaps I should make this the Year of the Novella! I probably could do a year from those on my TBR. Particularly if I make 180-200 my definition.
I did think about it, but was feeling pretty discouraged about the whole bot scraping thing at the time. Now that I’ve had a week free of activity I’m feeling more in control of my blog again and may be tempted to write up something about bot influenced stats versus post-bot stats?
I completely understand that … but yes, that could be interesting I think.
15 years of weekly posts is a tremendous achievement, especially given your comments about how life has changed in recent years bringing more commitments.
Thanks very much Karen. I guess it’s been good for me!
Like you, I love stat’s. My top posts are nearly always short stories by canonical Canadian writers. I used to get a lot of comments with specific (i.e. homework) questions, sometimes amusingly phrased as though the writer thought it would be rude to just outright ask but it’s nearly outright asking anyway, and sometimes so direct it made me laugh. Tell me what the gravel pit means. Like, shuuuut uuuuuup about all the word stuff, this is my assignment right here. get to it. With extra exclamation marks out of frustration!! lol But that’s, meaning the questions, faded away in recent years (and those posts have fallen this year with the scraping phenomenon). I miss the search terms too: they were fun!
Haha, Marcie, I’ve had those questions on and off over the years too – usually either about what some motif/symbol means or what the ending means. But you are right these have tailed off. Should we be worried? Is it because these works aren’t being read anymore (so assignments aren’t being set)?
Maybe all the teachers have little notes about what Whispering Gums said and what Buried In Print said about everything, so the students know to not ask the two of us anymore. hee hee
Haha Marcie!!