As anyone who's read this blog more than once will note, I'm always intrigued by the ways in which people discover the blog.  I've just been looking at the stats helpfully provided by Blogger/Google, and one site that's got me beat as to what it's got to do with me is something called pu.gg.  When you go to this you find it's called Torrent Tracker.   I have sort of an idea what a Torrent is in internet terms - something along the lines of being able to download very large files (movies, for instance) in tiny bits, so that the bandwidth doesn't get overloaded.  At least that's what I gather it is.   So I'm not sure why this particular site would be sending anyone my way, but apparently they did, 34 times, over the last week or so.

More interesting than that little mystery, for me, are the search words that bring people on board.   According to the Blogger/Google stats, this is the list of top ten word searches over the last week that have hooked people up with this blog:

skinny tie
james berardinelli
frederick buechner marriage
graveyard
athlete's hand pictures
chrissy popadics
edgar jepson
how to wear a skinny tie
steve jobs quote about not settling
tui advert

An odd mix, to be sure.   And it's interesting that the skinny tie thing comes up twice.   It may be that when you put skinny tie into Google, a picture of a bloke wearing such a tie comes up in the images; click on him and you'll come to me.  I don't even remember where I found the picture...!

The 'graveyard' post relates to Neil Gaiman's book, The Graveyard Book.   Curiously, I'm about tenth on Google's search list for this, so it's interesting that people find me.   The mysteries of search engines are wondrous to behold.    However, I'm first on the list (as of today) when you put in Frederick Buechner marriage which is something of a surprise.   The Buechner piece is great, and perhaps a lot of people are using it at their weddings these days.   Well, it's all there on my post!

Just remembered that in the script of The Mousetrap, the irritating old lady, Mrs Boyle, talks about the young architect's ties, calling them skinny...or narrow...or something that equally implies disdain for his lack of style.  Actually, now I think about it, I think she just says, 'And his ties' - Agatha Christie has already told us in the script directions that his tie needs to be skinny.  

Couple of keywords

Just a quick follow up on my previous post: in regard to which keywords have caused people to find their way to my blog the following two are top equal:

	37	15.35%	the graveyard book
	37	15.35%	chrissy popadic

The Graveyard Book is by Neil Gaiman, and the post only appeared early this month. Chrissy Popadic comes from Boise, and is a fairly popular sports person. However, look her up on Google, and I don't come within a cooey of being the first person on the search results.

Curious.

The Graveyard Book

I picked up Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book while in the children's library the other day (all the best fiction is in the children's section, I sometimes think). Interestingly, the recommendation on the front cover is by Diana Wynne Jones, whose children's books I've been reading a good deal of recently. (Finished the fourth the other day, which means I've read all the Howl's Moving Castle series.)

Gaiman's book starts out rather nastily, with the murders of three members of a family, but then takes a twist and has the surviving toddler heading off into the local graveyard, where he's adopted by a couple of ghosts, and gets as his guardian someone who's neither alive nor a ghost...

For the first few chapters the book seems episodic, as though Gaiman was offering us a set of short stories on a theme. Gradually, however, all these episodes coalesce into a superb climax. This isn't a story for fainthearted children (though there seem to be few of those around these days): it's grim in more than one place, and some of the things that happen aren't pleasant. (Don't read it to children who are prone to nightmares.) Gaiman has never been a writer to avoid the unpleasant; it's even apparent in his adult books. (Stardust, perhaps the least grim of his adult stories, still has some exceptionally nasty characters).

Gaiman is a wonderfully imaginative writer, stylish in his use of language (he expects children to keep up, and only in one place explains something for the uninitiated) and is able to create worlds that extend the mind. This is a thoroughly enjoyable read, with splashes of humour to leaven the nasty bits.