Hello and welcome to lucythereader.com! My name is Lucy Powrie and you may know me as the author of The Paper & Hearts Society, as a booktuber or from my previous blog, Queen of Contemporary, which I started in 2012 when I was 12 years old.
Here’s the thing about starting a blog when you’re 12: you change a lot in the subsequent years. There are many things I’d do the same if I had the chance, but there’s also a lot I’d do very differently.
So I’ve decided to say (a sad, tentative) goodbye to Queen of Contemporary, while still keeping it as an archive of the blogging work I’ve done in the years to date, and wave hello to lucythereader, my brand new blog where I’m looking forward to sharing more of my bookish personality, life, and thoughts.
To introduce you to me, I thought I’d share 12 bookish facts about myself!
12 Bookish Facts About Me
1. I’ve ALWAYS loved reading, and can’t remember a time when I haven’t loved it. I would get a bedtime story every night and would beg my mum for more and more and more, except I’d turn around and she’d already be asleep. Books never made me want to go to bed — I craved more!
2. When I was younger, I gravitated towards animal stories — I devoured all of Beatrix Potter’s books, wanted to live in Jill Barklem’s Brambly Hedge, and used to think I was Katharine Holabird and Helen Craig’s Angelina Ballerina. They’re still the books that make me feel the most warm and cosy because I have such fond memories of reading them.
3 . My favourite book is Shirley by Charlotte Brontë! I’m almost constantly re-reading it, diving in to my favourite passages and learning more about myself along the way. The main characters, Shirley Keeldar and Caroline Helstone, have the most wonderful friendship, and even though it isn’t as polished as Jane Eyre, I think it’s the more charming of the two.
4. My favourite book may have been written by Charlotte, but my favourite author (and poet) is Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights had a life-changing effect on me: it was a friend to me when I was going through one of my darkest times; it opened so many doors, such as being able to work with the Brontë Society. I’d never read anything so brutally dark yet hopeful before, where the landscape was a character just as much as any of the characters were. I love it with all my heart.
5. My favourite Brontë story is from Emily’s time in Brussels. She didn’t exactly fit in, wearing odd clothes and not interacting with other people in the ways they expected to be interacted with, but when questioned she said: “I wish to be as God made me.” They are words I always remind myself of when I worry what other people may think of me. If Emily Brontë was true to herself, I can be too!
6. The first YA book I remember reading was The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot and I read all of the other books in the series, and then the rest of Meg Cabot’s novels, in quick succession. I fell in love with Mia and rooted for her and Michael, couldn’t get enough of Lilly and Tina and all her other friends. I was very happy when the adult sequel was published! I felt like I’d come full circle with Mia.
7. The first time I remember wanting to be a writer was aged 8. I was tasked in a literacy lesson with writing a story based on a picture of a small stream. I wrote about a duck called Genius and a water vole, and when the lesson had finished I rushed home to write the ending. Maybe I should dig that one out of the archives?!
8. The Paper & Hearts Society was the first novel I’d ever written and began with the idea for a literary road trip, inspired by the literary locations I’d visited myself the summer I began writing it: Bath, Stratford-Upon-Avon, and the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire.
9. I write all of my books for my past self. The Paper & Hearts Society for my 16 year old self, who was in desperate need of friends who would stick by her no matter what; Read with Pride is written for my 17 year old self, who wanted to know there were people like her out there; and the third book in The Paper & Hearts Society is going to be written for my 18 year old self.
10. I find audiobooks very hard to listen to. Instead, I love listening to radio adaptations of my favourite classics, which I find I can become far more absorbed in. Particular favourites include Rachel Joyce’s adaptations of all of the Brontës’ novels!
11. I can’t read one book at a time. I have to be reading multiple or I get impatient! It does become quite difficult to keep track of what I’m reading, so I now have a notebook where I can write all the titles down.
12. I am TERRIFIED of horror novels or anything remotely scary and always have been. Horror is one of the few genres I would ever refuse to read!