What is Books + Bits?
It’s a place to informally discuss books and culture reccs that I find joyful and/or thought provoking: podcasts, movies, TV shows, journalism, poetry, sometimes vintage finds. I’ve loved recommending things for as long as I can remember and over the years, I have done it via a blog, a newspaper column, a podcast and now, this newsletter! In short? Let me cut through the cultural overload for you.
Who are you?
I’m a journalist and broadcaster based in London, who has written for The Sunday Times (where I used to be an editor on the Style mag) The Guardian, ELLE, Vogue, Grazia, The Cut, GQ and more. I have produced and hosted multiple no.1 podcasts including the The High Low, Doing It Right and Book Chat and made several audio documentaries for The BBC (about Britney Spears and the history of reality TV). I also host a podcast about long-term missing people called The Missing.
Much of my professional life is spent interviewing people - mainly authors like Margaret Atwood and Bernadine Evaristo, but sometimes celebrities for magazines, such as Kate Winslet and Gillian Anderson - and talking about books. I was a judge on the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction and I’ve also published two books - a 2020 essay collection, How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right? which was a Sunday Times bestseller and a 2022 anthology, What Writers Read: 35 Writers On Their Favourite Book, which I edited in aid of The National Literacy Trust.
When will I receive a newsletter?
All subscribers receive a free, chunky edition of Books+Bits proper every other Tuesday. (My school report once said: “Pandora must learn the art of brevity”. I have yet to.)
For £6 a month, paid subscribers receive an extra letter every Friday. This includes:
one monthly edition of Shelf Request - where I answer a reader request for books on a specific topic/ style, with a dozen or so books
two monthly Thoughts which are normally books - where I deep-dive on one book - but can sometimes be tv/ movies I want to discuss in depth
either an episode of Book Chat with Bobby - a podcast now exclusive to Books+Bits where we discuss a book more than 2 years old - OR an AMA session where I will answer your ques
What do I do if I can’t afford a paid subscription?
Please e-mail me and I will comp you one.
