{"id":5598,"date":"2014-12-31T19:18:16","date_gmt":"2015-01-01T00:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/?p=5598"},"modified":"2014-12-31T19:18:16","modified_gmt":"2015-01-01T00:18:16","slug":"top-five-posts-of-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/archives\/5598","title":{"rendered":"Top Five Posts of 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So\u2026 it&#8217;s been a light blogging year.<\/p>\n<p>There seems to be a cycle where the more I write, the more people visit, and the more I want to write.  But the same phenomenon works in the other direction.  I also think that blogs are generally in decline these days.  Many thanks to the readers who have stuck with the blog while it has been mostly riddles and anagrams.  I hope to have more for you in the new year.<\/p>\n<p>Still, we did manage to reach 150,000 views last month, just two short years after <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/archives\/3486\">hitting 100,000<\/a>, so that&#8217;s not nothing.  Let&#8217;s have some cake.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/Cake3.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/Cake3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"337\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The 150,000th hit came in at 11:02pm on Wednesday, November 26, 2014 from Denver, Colorado. The mile-high milestone found the site via a Google search and viewed the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/archives\/5326\">Teach Along with the <em>Frozen<\/em> Soundtrack<\/a> post.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;m not giving up yet, and I&#8217;ve paid to renew the domain name and hosting services for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/archives\/2961\">another three years<\/a>.  So the blog will be here for us if we wish to be here for it, at least until December 2017.<\/p>\n<p>And there were a few posts this year that I was proud to write and happy to see find an audience.  There weren&#8217;t ten of them, but I&#8217;d put the top five up against the best of the rest, so let&#8217;s get right to it!<\/p>\n<p>5. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/archives\/5588\">Thursday Morning Riddle: Ambiguous Edition<\/a> (December 18)<\/p>\n<p>This was a riddle that had two possible answers, each of which fit all of the clues.  I&#8217;ve never done that before, and don&#8217;t expect to be doing it again any time soon.<\/p>\n<p>4. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/archives\/5313\">A Good Pairing<\/a> (February 9)<\/p>\n<p>In a rare digression into teaching Shakespeare, I compare the literary devices between popular song lyrics and a Shakespeare sonnet.  This pairing has been teacher-tested and student-approved!<\/p>\n<p>3. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/archives\/5549\">Plantagenetics<\/a> (December 2)<\/p>\n<p>Do recent revelations about infidelity in the royal family cast doubts on the legitimacy of the Queen?  No.  No, they don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>2. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/archives\/5326\">Teach Along with the <em>Frozen<\/em> Soundtrack<\/a> (June 2)<\/p>\n<p>This is an exploration of some of the literary, poetic, and rhetorical devices in the soundtrack for Disney&#8217;s <em>Frozen<\/em> that you can point out for students, or have them find for you.<\/p>\n<p>1. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/archives\/5468\">Family Trees for Shakespeare&#8217;s Histories<\/a> (September 19)<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been meaning to do this for years, and I finally did it!  Each play&#8217;s tree shows who\u2019s living, who\u2019s dead, who\u2019s related to whom, who is actually in the play, and what names might be used to reference them.  Enjoy!<\/p>\n<p>Have a Happy New Year, and I&#8217;ll see you in 2015!  (Probably\u2026)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So\u2026 it&#8217;s been a light blogging year. There seems to be a cycle where the more I write, the more people visit, and the more I want to write. But the same phenomenon works in the other direction. I also think that blogs are generally in decline these days. Many thanks to the readers who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,40,2,13,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cake","category-list","category-meta","category-technology","category-year-end"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5598"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5604,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5598\/revisions\/5604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}