The Top and bottom of it – in case you missed these…

Kenthinksaloud has seen amazing growth since February (nearly tripling in followers) this year and many, many bloggers, in particular, have joined in just the last couple of months. If you are like me, you tend to join a blog and then start reading from then on, only quickly reading a handful of previous posts to get a feel for the it. It means it is easy to miss some gems if they are not brought to your attention.

So I thought I’d share some of the most popular posts from kenthinksaloud with you – and some from the bottom of the stats list too!

I’m not going to refer to posts I’ve re-blogged from other sites (though if I posted them here there was good reason and I encourage you to read them if you find them ) but just ones I’ve written myself. I would like to think there are not any posts which are awful on this site but many of the ones from the bottom of the list I’m highlighting were written last year and so may have been missed by quite a few of you who have joined since.

So here’s a look at the most read and least read – NOT the best and the worst; I’ll leave that to your judgement. I hope it encourages you to read some again and, more importantly, to look at some you may have missed especially if you have only joined me recently. Most are quick and easy to read – Enjoy!

Top of the Pops

After the home pages, How we got here and About me pages which tend, by default, to be the first people come to or look at, the most popular (and still the most searched for item) was my minipost 11 – Bangladeshi Fashion. I guess fashion was the keyword here so some may have come expecting something different. Nevertheless, the three posts on this subject certainly caused a lot of discussion.

Similarly, the second most popular was another minipost – number 2 – British Culture I will miss. This was undoubtedly because of my reference to Chris Moyles – a very famous radio DJ in the UK – and I continue to get regular hits from Google searches on that. I suspect most people looking for Chris would be highly disappointed in reading my pages. I’m not what most Radio 1 fans would like to read. Far from it…

Aliens conquer Whitehaven was the next favourite. This review of Jeff Wayne’s War of The Worlds done in my local town of Whitehaven was probably mostly read by people from the town (not surprisingly). Nevertheless, others from around the world took an interest too and it continues to get hits internationally to this day.

It came as a surprise to me (but not to my family) when I found out earlier this year that I have ADHD. Apparently, the term that should be used is “Twice Special” because I am one of many (as I discovered through the blog-o-sphere) who have made ADHD work for them and this gets its own special term. I rather like it! The fact Discovering ADHD has been read by several hundred (and this is only a little blog, remember) tells you how many in this world identify with the condition. I advocate here and in Making ADHD that we need a different perspective on what has been seen as a problem. I suggest it is at least as much society’s problem and, very often, not ours at all.

Fifth and still read by a few hundred (but deserving of many more) was my post on Rehab and Clubfoot work. This deserves attention not for my writing skills (the Pulitzer Prize is still far from my grasp) but because of the hard work carried out every day by my wife and her therapy team here at LAMB. She has made a difference to countless hundreds of lives – mostly young ones over the last seven years or so. I’m proud of her and the whole team (who happen to be lovely people too). Support her by reading the post and re-posting or sharing on your social networks if you feel appropriate.

Finally, for this list, I include the next one for those of you who are like me and are nosey about the people whose work we read. When I visit a home I always go straight to the bookshelves or CD racks if they are obvious and scour what I find there. It tells me a lot about the person I’m visiting. It is the same with blogs and blogger’s ‘top 10’s’. So My top 10 Albums proved to be a popular read. It still gets some hits and had lots of comments – some from those in disbelief that I could have missed their favourite bands. It was a fun post and there are a few others like that dotted around on this blog. Which reminds me…I promised to do a Top 10 Musicals at some point. I must get on with that…

Hidden Gems

Ek Maghe Sheet Jae Na is at the bottom of the list partly, I think, because miniposts don’t get advertised on my own social networks (they are meant, primarily, for those of you who follow the blog though I don’t make them private – I may do before long though if I can figure out how to make wordpress let me). This post looked at winter in Bangladesh. It doesn’t happen for long and it is mild in comparison to most winters around the world. Yet it is still deadly for the poor. Take a look – miniposts are always short.

Minipost 3 – S.A.D. carried on the winter theme but looked at a condition that not many know about and some don’t believe in. I can tell you, as a school teacher for many years in the UK which suffers horribly from this problem, SAD definitely exists and is a nightmare for teachers throughout the country. Does it affect you in your country? Let me know.

Minipost 7 – Technology, Pratchett and Life in Bangladesh was, I admit, an eclectic mix of things to talk about; especially in just 500 words. I combined some comments about the Internet and my love/hate relationship with it between my two countries with my excitement, at the time, with kindle and Audible. I’m still a big fan. Terry Pratchett was a side subject but reading his books should, I believe, be mandatory for all nations.

In April those of us who live inside the LAMB compound experienced life for everyone outside for when our electricity generators all broke at the same time. We had weeks and weeks of experiencing the horrors of ‘load-shedding’ where the Government turns electricity off for hours at a time several times a day just when the heat is at its worst. When Darkness Falls reflects on this. If you are used to continuous electricity that never stops and you admit you often waste it without thinking about it – read this post.

One of my all-time favourite posts was The Widow’s Cry told as a story but the events that took place are still red raw to me now two years later. But not many have read it. It is long and not fun but does talk over my feelings about grief and compares a Santal funeral with the passing of my father just a few months before the post was written.

Perhaps titling a post as ‘Chimneys’ was not the cleverest thing I did from a blog marketing point of view. All the advice on writing ‘killer’ blog titles would say that was a big mistake as the word is not a big Google hit and does not inspire people to want to read it. But I stand by the decision even though this post really looks at a theory of why Western culture and Asian culture are very different to each other. I’m no sociologist (though my Masters is very sociological in content) but the basis for the argument came from someone who is and they suggest that the chimney is the source of all our differences (yes, really). I would love to hear your thoughts (in agreement or disagreeing) about this – especially if you joined the blog in the last 3 or 4 months.

So there you go. I’ve you’ve read all these before, sorry (but why don’t you read them again and make a comment? It is possible to do so now but wasn’t easy in the early days). If you’ve not seen them before – please – check them out.

I hope you like them.

A little pic of the four of us holidaying in the Sundarbans