Celebrating One Year of Hillbilly Highways

It is hard to believe that it has been (now over) one year since I launched Hillbilly Highways.  It has been a richly rewarding year.

I am quite happy with the balance I have struck.  My rough rule of thumb is to strive toward two parts country noir, one part nonfiction, one part TV/film, and one part “oddments,” balanced against a Music Monday post each week.

A number of the posts are deeply personal.  They take a lot out of me.  The nonfiction posts are a great time suck.  But they are both immensely rewarding.  I am gratified to see that none of the interests I have chosen have entirely escaped your interest.

Read on past the jump to learn the most popular posts here at Hillbilly Highways over the past year.

Hillbilly Highways is also running 15% ahead of where Every Day Should Be Tuesday was running at the same point.  The success of speculative fiction book reviews should be no surprise given my existing fan base.

I have a lot of pride in the posts below.  I am even more proud of your taste.  There are zero posts below that I am ashamed of.

 

Top 5 Posts

• Movies: Braveheart and Outlaw King
• Friday Night Lights Friday: 30 for 30: What Carter Lost
• Top Ten Tuesday: Best Books I’ve Read This Year – Hillbilly Highways Edition
• Music Monday: Was It 26 by Chris Stapleton
• Music Monday: Photograph by Charlie Robison

 

Top 5 Fiction Reviews

• SF: Some Dark Holler by Luke Bauserman
• SF: Krampus: The Yule Lord by Brom
• SF: Who Fears the Devil? by Manly Wade Wellman
• Country Noir: Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell
• Country Noir: Savage Season by Joe Lansdale

 

Top 5 Nonfiction Reviews

• Nonfiction: White Working Class by Joan Williams
• Nonfiction: Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area by Harry M. Caudill
• Nonfiction: Appalachian Reckoning, Hillbilly Elitism by T.R.C. Hutton
• Nonfiction: Rising Out of Hatred by Eli Saslow
• Friday Night Light Fridays: Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream

 

Top 5 Movie/TV Reviews

• Movies: Braveheart and Outlaw King
• Friday Night Lights Friday: 30 for 30: What Carter Lost
• Movies: Black 47
• Television: Ozark season 1
• Movies: Rush (1991)

 

Top 5 Music Monday Posts

• Was It 26 by Chris Stapleton
• Photograph by Charlie Robison
• Michigan Hillbilly Music Edition
• Straw in the Wind and Uncle Lloyd by The Steel Woods
• Dwight Yoakam by Sarah Shook & the Disarmers

 

Top 5 Oddments Posts

• Top Ten Tuesday: Best Books I’ve Read This Year – Hillbilly Highways Edition
• 9/11 and the Problem with “Millennials”
• Top Ten Tuesday: Books By My Favorite Authors That I Still Haven’t Read—Country Noir Edition
• A Cruel Mathematical Symmetry
• Announcing Friday Night Lights Friday – Index