Traffic, Sundays in America, & The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy

TRAFFIC.  Under the radar.  No Twitter account. I was accused of inviting a jam.  CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK. 

Not much goes on here at Frisbee. We're a backwater.   Twitter stalkers sat back and waited; nothing happened.  Occasionally I stopped in to say I read a book, ate a cupcake, or rode my bicycle.


A  few people were hyped up this week because of something I wrote on conflict of interest.  Marketers, reviewers, bookstore affiliates:  what are the ethics? 


I learned something:  I'm a communist, or a rebel.  Don't stand up for integrity.  Usually my blog has no Twitter-based traffic, because I have no Twitter account.  A small group of berserk readers, sparked by a Twitter SOS, told me I was "ornery" for joking about Persephone Reading Week.  Notwithstanding my argument about the incestuousness of the marketing-blogger-bookstore affiliate community, I was condemned as  a "negative" person who doesn't want to "promote" books.  It is the "law" that forces bloggers to list all the free books they market for publishers.  Yet it is apparently unnecessary for  bookstore affiliate bloggers to reveal that they may, and do, profit from their reviews.

My husband looked at the stats on my blog--the same few twitterers hovered all day--and proposed that I end the excitement by deleting my 30-word joke AND their hysterical comments.  They went back to their hole in the UK.... 


At this point, you won't be surprised, I feel no obligation to read another Persephone book ever.  And I was probably one of their better customers...  

SUNDAYS IN AMERICA.  A few years ago I read an enjoyable book by Suzanne Strempek Shea, Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama, and Other Page-Turning Adventures from a Year in a Bookstore.  Her thoughtful, entertaining, often humorous account of her year of volunteering in an independent bookstore was right up my alley because I love anything about books. Her reason for working there, however, was dark:   A survivor of breast cancer, she was exhausted after illness and chemotherapy, and, though she was healing, needed a reason to get out of the house.  

Shea is the author of feather-light, humorous novels about the Polish-American Catholic community:  polkas, kielbasa, family, and romance.  I especially like her non-fiction, and just bought Sundays in America:  A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith.   Shea, a Catholic, moved by the faith of the mourners of Pope John Paul, decided to travel around the U.S. and visit a different church--Baptist, Quaker, Mormon, etc.-- every week to explore the meaningful religious lives of Americans and center herself again. 

THE DIARIES OF SOFIA TOLSTOY.  This came in at the library and I do want to read it.  It is, however, 607 pages of small print.  It may be due at the library before I get around to it.  I have a biography to finish first.  And I'm still reading Kristin Lavransdatter.  I may have to check out Sofia Tolstoy multiple times.