Hello! I’m Elle. As the result of a transatlantic parental romance, I was born in America and spent my formative years in central Virginia. I came to England to attend Oxford University when I was eighteen, read and wrote for three years, then had to get a job. After some dismal office work and some even more dismal waitressing, I got a job at Heywood Hill bookshop in Mayfair. It’s been there since 1936. After six happy and formative years there, I took the plunge into a part-time English Lit PhD at Birkbeck College, University of London. I’m currently in my fifth year of seven there, writing on long eighteenth-century narratives by and about sex workers; my first article was published in September 2025, and is open access (free to read) here. This is supplemented by part-time work in biotech operations. (I am not a biotech person. I do calendars and write documents.)
This is a blog about my personal reading. It’s gone through various instars, but at present, I try to write something about every book I finish. Academic monographs are usually exempted from this effort, unless I read them cover to cover. I generally read anywhere between fourteen and twenty books a month (exceptional circumstances have resulted in much lower or higher figures in given months). Most of these fall somewhere on the spectrum of “literary fiction”, however one defines that. My genre reading tends to be on the literary end of historical fiction, science fiction and fantasy, and occasional crime and horror. In nonfiction I tend to like some social history, memoir, cultural criticism, and theology, and am particularly interested in work that deals with queerness, sex and sexuality, God, death and dying, disability, literary criticism, music, the natural world, occasional law and true crime, or (niche, this) deep dives into a particular industry or lifestyle. Authors I love include (but are not limited to) James Baldwin, Lucia Berlin, Octavia Butler, A.S. Byatt, Italo Calvino, Willa Cather, Ted Chiang, Zen Cho, Samuel R. Delany, George Eliot, Bernardine Evaristo, Jasper Fforde, EM Forster, Tana French, Elizabeth Gaskell, Josie George, Nicola Griffith, Sarah Hall, Thomas Hardy, Siri Hustvedt, Olivia Laing, Philip Larkin, Ursula K. Le Guin, Audre Lorde, Carmen Maria Machado, Jon McGregor, China Mieville, Sarah Moss, Flannery O’Connor, Tim Pears, Richard Powers, Namwali Serpell, Dodie Smith, Francis Spufford, Neal Stephenson, JRR Tolkien, Anthony Trollope, Ivan Turgenev, Elise Valmorbida, Jeff VanderMeer, Colson Whitehead, and Virginia Woolf.
I used to write sporadically but enthusiastically for Litro Magazine and helped to establish Quadrapheme Magazine (now defunct). I completed my first novel, Hungry Generations, in 2019 and seek representation for it, on and off (mostly off; querying sucks). My current creative project is a medical memoir-cum-history of Type I diabetes, which I was diagnosed with at age three. I’ve been on the Women’s Prize and Young Writer of the Year Award shadow panels, was an official judge for the 2022 Barbellion Prize, and spent a year on the London Library’s Emerging Writers Programme from 2021-2022. My academic interests include the long eighteenth century, literary depictions of sex workers, the literary marketplace, women’s writing, the Gothic, Romanticism, sentimentalism, bookselling, and erotica. I’m also a classically trained soprano and sing with a handful of chamber choirs in London and the Southeast.
If you are a publicist: please read the above paragraph before asking me to read one of your books. At the moment I am not accepting requests for reviews or blog tours.
You can follow me on Bluesky here (I no longer use Twitter and have deleted my archive there), on Instagram here, and on Goodreads here. I have LinkedIn but that’s mostly for biotech stuff. If you’re a former Year in Books subscriber, please use my Twitter or Instagram DMs to get in touch.
If you like what I write, why not buy me a coffee?
Elle Thinks 
How do I receive a notice with a link (by email) when you post? Sonjia
Dearest Sonjia–I’ve added a thingie underneath the “Pages” list; there’s a Follow button you can click, and it should take you to a form where you can enter your email address. Thanks for mentioning it! ~E
Yay! So happy I came upon your site. I was googling ‘The Secret Garden’ and found your post. 🙂
Amazing! So pleased to have had you here–thanks for commenting 🙂
How awesome you have such an American influence. Between my mother being Mexican, having studied English and American literature at uni and growing up with sitcoms like Frasier, Friends, Seinfeld, The Larry Sanders Show, Everybody Loves Raymond and Fresh Prince I think it’s something I’ve had all through my life.
That’s cool–your mum’s Mexican? Did she come to the UK or did your parents meet elsewhere? Being a dual citizen is great fun, although Americans think I’m British and the British, of course, usually identify me as American (some go for Irish. I’ve also been asked if I’m a farmer–apparently the hard “r” sounds are sufficiently like a Gloucestershire twang…!)
They met in London by complete chance/fate. A pretty cool story really. No surprise I grew up a romantic and a lover of books. Being pale skinned and half Mexican does seem to baffle everyone. I’m really curious to hear your accent now…
Hi! I’m so pleased to have found your blog. You read a variety of literary fiction; many that I have never heard about!
And we’re on the same boat: graduated with a B.A. in English and now trying to trudge through life as a functional human being…
Good luck with everything!
Thanks for reading, and for the good luck wishes–I hope you enjoy!
Hi Eleanor, I’ve tagged you in the TBR Book Pile meme. It’s just a bit of fun so don’t feel obliged. The link’s here: https://thewritesofwoman.wordpress.com/2015/11/12/tbr-book-tag/
Naomi
wahey! I’ve been looking for a good meme recently, this is perfect 🙂 Thanks!
Dear Elle:
Apologies for posting publicly, but I did not see an e-mail listed. I enjoyed your blog, Elle Thinks, and would like to request a book review. You can check out a sample chapter, blog and bio at theoryofirony.com and/or contact me at theoryofirony1@gmail.com.
Sincerely,
Erik
Hey there Elle! Just browsing around the blogosphere, finding some fun and interesting blogs to follow to make some new friends in 2016. If you like, hop on over to my world at https://www.thatssojacob.wordpress.com, and if you see anything you like, comment or follow! Have a great day and happy new year!
So, you might be one of two kind of people–the kind who think these awards are stupid, or the kind who has received so many, they don’t even have time to think about them anymore. But if you’re the third kind (the kind who’s flattered by praise from strangers), I hope you’ll be happy to know that I nominated you for a One Lovely Blog Award.
The link is here (https://dearlilyjune.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/raging-lovelies-on-the-occasion-that-you-need-early-lily-trivia/), but so you don’t think this is just shameful self-promotion for my own blog, I’ve also included what I wrote about you below (so you don’t feel forced to visit my page if you don’t want to!)
Of your blog, I wrote:
“Elle Thinks–Authors of the world, take note: The Pulitzer is outmoded. You should now all be competing for a good Elle review.”
Stay lovely & whatnot, Alyssa
I love these things 🙂 And thank YOU! Your letters are so beautiful; I love reading them. I’ll check out the post after work!
Coding intrigues me – I;ve just had to do a tiny bit of it for a new website and I like the very methodical nature
GREAT site! I’m impressed with your reading prowess, and your output!