These Little Words

A little update – taking a break from blogging

This year I have been trying out new types of blog posts, namely the monthly reading diary and then a post in the middle. I haven’t posted an individual book review since early December. For me I felt that reviewing each book I read in separate posts put too much pressure on me, and on […]

Lizzi

June 22, 2022

Articles, Personal

Blogging, Book blogs, Book reviews, Personal, Publishing, Reading
Reading Diary: February – May 2022

It has been a while since I posted here, or was able to write anything. I was ill on and off from December through to the start of April, but finally managed to get myself sorted out with a visit to the doctor and a sort-of diagnosis in the form of the fact that my […]

Lizzi

May 16, 2022

Fiction, Non-Fiction, Reviews

A Ghost in the Throat, Book review, Dead Relatives, Devotion, Doireann Ni Ghriofa, Fiction, Hannah Kent, Hardback, Historical fiction, Lucie McKnight Hardy, Memoir, Miranda Cowley Heller, Non Fiction, Paperback, Reading diary, The Paper Palace, Water Shall Refuse Them
A little update

Hello dear readers. This is just a little update in lieu of the two blog posts I had planned for February (including my reading diary for the month). As I talked about a bit on Twitter the other day, February was quite a hard month for me with a lot of solo parenting and both […]

Lizzi

March 2, 2022

Personal
Reading Diary: January 2022

Recently I’ve been exploring the role and function of book blogging and how I want to fit into it. For a while I’ve just reviewed each book I read individually, and I think for me that format was getting a little stale, and I wasn’t sure how appealing it actually was to readers – especially […]

Lizzi

January 30, 2022

Fiction, Non-Fiction, Reviews

2021, 2022, A.K. Blakemore, Beth Underdown, Biography, Book review, Fiction, Granta Books, Hardback, Hild, Historical fiction, Hutchinson Heinemann, John Keats, Jonathan Cape, Keats, Lauren Groff, Lucasta Miller, Matrix, Monthly wrap up, Nicola Griffith, Non Fiction, Paperback, Reading diary, Reading wrap up, The Key in the Lock, The Manningtree Witches, The Witchfinder’s Sister, Viking
Five books that changed the way I read

Some books you read, and then you just sort of forget; they don’t make any difference in your life. Some you think about for a while after, but then they fade from your memory and you move on to the next thing. But there are some books that just get their hooks into you and […]

Lizzi

January 17, 2022

Articles, Comment, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Personal, Reviews

20th Century, Alone in Berlin, Biography, Daphne du Maurier, Daphne DuMaurier, Donna Tartt, Fiction, GoodReads, Hans Fallada, Hardback, History, Jane Austen, Jenny Williams, Julius, Literature, Little Man What Now, Lord of the Flies, More Lives Than One, My Cousin Rachel, Non Fiction, Paperback, Penguin, Penguin English Library, Persuasion, Rebecca, Sarah Waters, Second World War, The Goldfinch, The Paying Guests, The Secret History, William Golding
New year, new books… and more

So, somehow, it’s now 2022. Today feels like the actual start of the new year because it’s the first day I’m back in my usual weekly routine with my husband at work and my son at nursery, and I’m alone in the house (with the dog) for the first time in like three weeks. And […]

Lizzi

January 5, 2022

Articles, Comment, Personal

Articles, Book blogs, Book reviews, Books, Comment, Instagram, Newsletters, social media, Substack
Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021) by Sally Rooney

As I talked about in my previous post, I missed the Sally Rooney hype the first time around in 2017, and it was the release of this novel that got me a little more interested in her. I started with Conversations with Friends, but then decided to dive right into Beautiful World, Where Are You […]

Lizzi

December 8, 2021

Fiction, Reviews

2021, Beautiful World Where Are You, Book review, Conversations with Friends, Faber, Faber & Faber, Fiction, Hardback, Mr Salary, New fiction, Sally Rooney
Conversations with Friends (2017) by Sally Rooney

I’m probably the last book blogger (at least in the UK, who likes this sort of thing, etc…) to read this book. The hype around Sally Rooney has been quite something, and I often have mixed feelings about hype. Often with “popular” novelists, especially female ones, I find that the novels that get the most […]

Lizzi

September 27, 2021

Comment, Fiction, Reviews

2017, Beautiful World Where Are You, Book review, Conversations with Friends, Faber, Faber & Faber, Fiction, Normal People, Paperback, Sally Rooney
Yearbook (2021) by Seth Rogen

I read Yearbook way back in May, but because of life I am only now getting around to writing about it. I also read it in about two days – partly because it’s so short and partly because it was so engaging – so it was one of those reading experiences that just sort of […]

Lizzi

September 12, 2021

Non-Fiction, Reviews

2021, Angelica Huston, Autobiography, Book review, Crown Publishing, Drew Barrymore, GoodReads, Hardback, Memoir, Non Fiction, Review, Roxane Gay, Seth Rogen, Yearbook
The Island (1959) by Ana María Matute

Getting ready to write this post, I realised it’s been three months since I posted on here. I honestly didn’t realise that much time had passed. That is this pandemic life – time has completely changed. Living in this weird in-between state of anxiety and hesitancy with little pockets of “normal life”, with hardly any […]

Lizzi

August 1, 2021

Fiction, Reviews

1950s, 1959, 20th Century, Ana Maria Matute, Book review, Death in Spring, Fiction, Laura Lonsdale, Mallora, Merce Rodoreda, Paperback, Penguin, Penguin Modern Classics, Spanish Civil War, Spanish fiction, Spanish literature, The Island, Translated fiction