Readers and Travelers in March

Ending March with a Look at Arizona Wildflowers

Ken and I took a little road trip from Tucson to Sells, Arizona on the Tohono O’odham reservation to see the spectacular spring desert wildflower show.

And Now the Stats from March

MOST POPULAR POSTS

New books dominate the list this month, with two coming from Tucson Festival of Books presenters.

1. Readers were intrigued by the new travel literature memoir of a year in Sri Lanka that the author found was “not quite Paradise.”
2. The fate of Mexican entrants coming across the Arizona border illustrates travel of a desperate kind in this new book.
3. An older movie lures travelers to Province, France.
4. A gorgeous new book of photos travels to Iran in the 1950s.
5. Another new travel book with many photos reaches back further for historic road trips across America.

Readers Who Comment (A Lot!)

*I had to queries about how to comment, so I will take a moment to explain that there are two ways to see the comment box. A) you can click on the line below the post that says 0 comments, or 3 comments, or however many. That will let you read the comments and show you the box. B) you can click on the title of the post. That will open the post in its own page with comments and comment box. Warning: if you are reading this in an e-mail or RSS feed or a Lonely Planet, you have to go to A Traveler’s Library to comment.

Back to business. Everybody (and especially ME)  is happy to hear from these careful readers who commented ten (or more) times in March. Thank you!

• Anjuli (whose blog is temporarily down, but whom you can find on Facebook as Connie Ong from Renton WA.)
• Jessie Voigts, Wandering Educators, for traveling teachers and others who travel. (And thanks for the guest blogs and the stumbles, too.)
• Alexandra Grabbe, Innkeeper and blogger at Chez Sven, the blog about running a green Cape Cod B & B  and the environment.
• Richard Mussler-Wright, who doesn’t have a blog, because he just expresses all his opinions here. Don’t miss his travel book recommendations.

Thanks, also to four people who posted five (or more) comments, and two of them are new to this list. Welcome–keep up the good work!

• Martha and Me, also known as Brette Sember when she is not blogging about her attempts to live Martha’s life.
• Laura Baran, another non-blogger, but thankfully, a BIG reader of travel literature.
• Kerry Dexter, my partner in the Great American Road Trip. She suggests music for the Road at Music Road, a beautiful and helpful blog.
• Mark H. of Travel Wonders, an exciting travel blog. (Not that I want to nag, Mark, but you DO owe me a guest post on your namesake.)

And to those of you who left one or two or three comments, we loved seeing those, too, so come back this month, please.

Leading Incoming links

(not counting search engines)

• Lonely Planet where I am part of the BlogSherpa program.
• Bloggies 2010, where I was a nominee for best travel blog.
• Camels and Chocolate, winner of the 2010 Bloggie for best travel blog.
• Music Road, as mentioned before a partner in the Great American Road Trip.
• Wandering Educators, where I serve as Travel Library Editor, and write a column each month.
• Greece Travel Secrets. This great blog by Mike Gerrard spills secrets about Greece all the time, but he was kind enough to reference my post about my favorite secret places in Greece.
• Byki. I noticed this one because they referred nearly a year ago to an environmental book post I did for Earth Day, and I am STILL getting hits. This is the blog for a wonderful language learning system site. Check it out if you need to learn a language.

Note to bloggers: link backs are the most valuable thing you can get for your blog traffic. I don’t buy them. I don’t beg for them (well, not TOO much). They just come organically.

Readers: do yourself a favor and check out all of these folks.

See you next month, and whenever you visit the Traveler’s Library.

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Tags: American road trip, Arizona wildflowers, best posts, new books, road trip, travel books, travel literature, Tucson Festival of Books