RARA-AVIS was announced on 5 January 1997, which means it
just turned six. Congratulations to all rare birds! Thanks to
everyone for making it so interesting and worthwhile. I have
a couple of ideas for things we could try this year, and I'll
send out mail about them soon. Themes of the month are
planned out through the summer, and there's lots to talk
about, no matter how often we hash out James Ellroy's
personality or how Daly, Hemingway and Hammett all related
way back when. If Mr. Wilson still has it in the works, we'll
be voting on the top ten works of each decade we're
surveying, and that's bound to get some arguments going and
turn out some interesting lists.
I pulled together some numbers to summarize the last year's
activity on the list. Messages per month:
Jan 2002: 457 (theme: Latino noir and hardboiled
fiction)
Feb 2002: 714
Mar 2002: 771
Apr 2002: 952 (an average of more than 31 per
day)
May 2002: 853
Jun 2002: 364
Jul 2002: 523 (UK hardboiled and noir)
Aug 2002: 709 (Fawcett Gold Medal paperback
originals)
Sep 2002: 365
Oct 2002: 285 (pre-1930 HB/noir writing)
Nov 2002: 376 (1930-1939 decade survey)
Dec 2002: 278 (1940-1949)
As always, there are people from all over the world on the
list. Going through the subscriber roster, I see people from
Canada (the list's home), the United States, New Zealand,
Japan, Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Australia,
Belgium, England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Finland,
Norway, and my memory fails me but I think there's someone on
the list from a country in Africa. Jose Latour joined us from
Cuba for a month. Some rare birds are well known, some
aren't, some talk a lot, some say nothing, but it's a great
mix, with much intelligent and spirited talk.
Here's everyone who sent more than 100 messages to the
list:
662 Michael Robison <
robison_m@crane.navy.mil>, <
zspider@gte.net>
486 Rene Ribic <
rribic@optusnet.com.au>
328 Bill Crider <
abc@wt.net>
309 Jim Doherty <
jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com>
252 Mark Sullivan <
dj-anonyme@webtv.net>
223 Mario Taboada <
matrxtech@yahoo.com>
199 William Denton <
buff@pobox.com>
188 Jim Blue <
wordrunner@aol.com>
176 Joy Matkowski <
jmatkowski1@comcast.net>, <
jmatkowski1@home.com>
171 Todd Mason <
todd.mason@tvguide.com>
162 Al Guthrie <
allanguthrie@ukonline.co.uk>
155 George Cupper <
gcupper3@yahoo.com>
151 Jon Lau <
baxdeal@aol.com>
146 Mark Blumenthal <
blumenidiot@21stcentury.net>
125 Erick Anderson <
erick.anderson@nike.com>
110 Carrie Pruett <
pruettc@hotmail.com>
Anthony Dauer almost made it, but was two under. 221 unique
e-mail address sent mail to the list; 41 sent one message
only during 2002: a few are from people using a different
address than usual, but most were lurkers who chimed in. I
hope there will be more this year!
There are 316 people on the list right now (138 on the
regular version and 188 on the digest), which is a score less
than last year. (That also means about 100 subscribers remain
absolutely quiet.)
Jan 1998: 163
Jan 1999: 237
Jan 2000: 288
Jan 2001: 312
Jan 2002: 338
Jan 2003: 316
As always, e-mail me if you have any problems with the list,
about content, technical issues, or anything else. I will
continue to pester peple about staying on topic and trimming
quoted text from their replies!
Bill, the list-owner
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 08 Jan 2003 EST