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Ellen

@ellenoffrell.bsky.social
87 followers 154 following 258 posts

book lady, cheese fiend. school librarian. writing a novel. opinions own

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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
i turned 30 the other day (yippee!) so i have collated a list of thirty small wisdoms
ellenmunroedmunds.substack.com
wisdom for your twenties
thirty advice nuggets for thirty years.
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
Halfway through the #Carnegies2026 shortlist and I have to say, delighted to find that this year's selections have a bit more of a spirit of fun about them. So nice to not be wading through constant dark themes this time! #LibrarySky #BookSky
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
Have been off the socials for lent! Did a lot of cooking and looking at trees! Recommend
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
Going offline for lent (almost anyway) You can still find me on app.thestorygraph.com/profile/elle... substack.com/@booktrotting Intermittently.
substack.com
Ellen | Substack
London school library professional. Cheese fiend. Slow runner. Erstwhile Shakespearean.
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
New #substack - what I read in January #reading #librarian #librarysky
open.substack.com
my january reading
what i've been reading recently
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Only read one of these so time to get stuck in! #SchoolLibrarian
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
I'm meant to be doing a CBT exercise where I have 'worry time' for 15 mins every evening where i look at a list of worries I've had that day, and worry about them. What it's giving me more clarity on, however, is how unrelated my anxiety seems to be to specific 'worries'.
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
First time writing anything particularly directly related to my #SchoolLibrarian work in the #substack but here we go: my thoughts (misgivings) about the practice of sorting kids into houses in children’s fantasy and whether we’re ready for something new:
open.substack.com
please stop sorting the children into houses
what to do when the hat calls you fash.
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
First time writing anything particularly directly related to my #SchoolLibrarian work in the #substack but here we go: my thoughts (misgivings) about the practice of sorting kids into houses in children’s fantasy and whether we’re ready for something new:
open.substack.com
please stop sorting the children into houses
what to do when the hat calls you fash.
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
New #Substack! Looking at #asmr and thinking about ASMR roleplays as a form of play #Writersky
ellenmunroedmunds.substack.com
tight squeeze, cool breeze, now you've got the shiveries!
is asmr art? is it fetish? or is it play?
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
IT’S TIME FOR MY FIRST ANTI-DESPAIR DAYLIGHT UPDATE OF THE YEAR! The sun rose at 8:05 this morning in London, and will set at 4:06. This is 8 additional minutes of daylight on last week. Yay!
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 04/01/2026
celeste ng, yaa gyasi and - for all that is good and holy - mother tartt: why must we hunger so long?
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 04/01/2026
New #substack, looking back of my year of reading big, thick books. #booksky #librarysky
open.substack.com
my year of big, fat books
in the game of tomes, the stitches on my tote bag straps are the real loser
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
new #substack: on being fundamentally incompatible with your therapist #writersky
ellenmunroedmunds.substack.com
where do you feel that in your body? / horchata
the problem, fundamentally, was the maine coon.
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 07/12/2025
New post: on having a few people over open.substack.com/pub/ellenmun...
open.substack.com
at this point you're probably aware i'm having a few people over / improvised red wine gravy
on hostessing with the mostest-ing
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
new on my #substack: my thoughts on growing up at the tail-end of mass radio-listenership and a blue cheese and leek pasta #foodsky #blogsky #substacksky #writersky
substack.com
what's cracklin? / blue cheese n leek spaghetti
the statistics do not support the idea that 'video killed the radio star'
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
Giving our library a freshen up
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Oh nice!
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
Peter Apps is the GOAT when it comes to untangling London’s housing crisis. Show Me The Bodies was as gripping as a thriller and left me in tears. This one is basically showing me the straight line you could draw between landlord greed and schools cutting support staff - including librarians
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
New on substack: my thoughts on taking up swimming for my stupid mental health as an adult after a fraught childhood experience with it
open.substack.com
a swim in the local leisure centre in the rain
on my fraught journey back to the pool, and the struggles of having a big heid.
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
Right #LibrarySky and #Booksky — what are your top #kidlit books of 2025? Particularly keen to read stuff on the MG/YA boundary!
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 16/11/2025
I've not made much of a secret of the fact that my mental health has been a little less than stellar of late. Have decided to revisit a teenage coping mechanism, blogging. (This is my roundabout way of saying I've started a substack) #Substack
open.substack.com
puddle / paneer
not a recipe, a journal maybe, maybe cope.
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
Big day to be me.
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
Boyfriend and I have a back and forth on the go at the moment. He recently finished reading Don Quixote, for context. Me: We need to get you a new book to read. Him: Nah, I've finished reading. Finished all the books. Me: You literally just read the first one.
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
I grew up right at the perfect golden time to make friends on the internet, who have become some of my closest IRL friends. I got to go to one's wedding a couple year's back! I went to another's birthday party on Wednesday. I feel sad for kids now that a lot of these opportunities seem closed off
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Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
“Where do you get your ideas from, Ms Le Guin?” From forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards, naturally. Where else?
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
I always hate the way Blinkist frames its services like "read a book in 15 minutes" as if you would get away with telling your pals you'd read the Count of Monte Cristo when actually all you'd done was read the synopsis on Wikipedia.
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
Happy #NationalPoetryDay. I picked Lochan by Kathleen Jamie for a school assignment in primary school and it's still my favourite to this day
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CILIP @cilip.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
We agree but add this: the #GreatSchoolLibraries campaign highlights that all children need a school library because adequately funded, staffed school libraries deliver enhanced & independent learning as well as reading & curriculum support & contribute to building lifelong readers. #Staffed
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
Omg this is so delightful for him how gorgeous
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Louie Stowell @louiestowell.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
This is my Lokifesto #KidsConf #UKkidlit #edusky lokibooks.com/lokifesto/
A poster of a manifesto about reading, by Loki, with 6 points on reading "bad" books, short books, comics, audioooks, webcomics and fanfic, plus not finishing bad books cos life is too short.
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Louie Stowell @louiestowell.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
The Anakin and Padme meme with alternating pics of Anakin and Padme. Anakin says We pledge a library in every primary school. Padme replies, cheerfully, With a librarian, right? Anakin merely stares at her. Now, with a look of fear, she repeats, With a librarian, right?
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
I think we're lurching back into a worrying period of matchmaking for practical circumstance. I know a lot of people who work in the arts/humanities whose wages provide no long term safety so they're looking for it in a partner.
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Richard Ovenden @richove.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
This is a very welcome development indeed IF the recurrent costs of funding school librarians is fully budgeted. ‘A pile of books is no more a library than a crowd of soldiers is an army’ to quote Gabriel Naudé who figured this out … 400 years ago… www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
theguardian.com
Rachel Reeves pledges a library in every primary school in England
Exclusive: Chancellor also set to unveil plans to get young people back into work in party conference speech
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
The year 8 reading drop off, observable in every school I've ever set foot in, is due to a massive resource drop off, no timetabling of library time (or lack of library/librarian) and the teenage sense that reading is terminally dull (led by lack of library/librarian). More testing = more tedium.
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
One of my pals who isn't a big reader recently got herself an eReader and she's been sending me updates on everything she's been reading since. She's legit read like three books in the last month. Proud librarian and proud pal! #LifelongReaders #LibrarianSky
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
Every day I come to work and I am approached by a fully sentient, walking, talking child, born after the London 2012 Olympics. Still trying to figure out how this is possible.
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emma @emmatranter.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
London literary types, I’d love for you to come along to this event we’re putting on next month! Tickets here - www.thehorsehospital.com/events/reenc...
Event poster:
Re-enchantment Readings
17th October 
7.30-10pm
The Horse Hospital 
WC1N 1JD

Featuring:
Ebrubaoghene Abel-Unokan
Alexander Orlov
Nadia Awad
Phoebe Stuckes
Tori Mangan

Tickets £4
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Louie Stowell @louiestowell.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
This is a good line though: "One does not teach ‘Macbeth’ and then give “equal prominence” to a text arguing that regicide is a good idea to provide “balance.” The balance comes from the critical skills taught to analyse the text, not from teaching an “opposing” novel."
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
No action more effective than trying to get one of the most prolific and accessible YA books of the last ten years banned after every child has already read it.
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
Sometimes egomaniacally get the sense that reading a lot of children's books somehow blunts my literary academic prowess (probably, realistically, the widening temporal gulf between myself and uni). Current solution is to try and read the LRB, which I have to do tracing each line with my pen.
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
Start-of-term lurgy has finally claimed me #SchoolLibrarian
media.tenor.com
a smurf wearing ear muffs and a scarf
ALT: a smurf wearing ear muffs and a scarf
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
NOBODY MOVE
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C.A. Petrov @capetrov.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
Also great! "That's why I think we should fund libraries more. It's not just because they're a great resource, it's because I don't wanna know what librarians will do if we don't give them a place to go."
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
Finally ticked this one off last night - pretty delightful, wasn’t expecting the romance to be quite so much fun. Bit inconsistent around the middle but a very fun premise thoughtfully executed #BookSky #SchoolLibrarian
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
It also becomes a horrible book buying ouroboros for librarians if books are constantly inter-referencing each other and you haven't read the books being referenced, then you have to read the books being referenced to know if it's worth getting the other ones. Bring back regular, descriptive blurbs
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
Last day of the first full week of school! Big pile of graphic novels on my desk to catalogue! We love to see it! #SchoolLibrarian
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Carel Press @carelpress.bsky.social · 24/08/2025
FT editorial says that the decline of reading is lamentable but 'childhood encouragement, libraries & government support can revive the habit' “... This can only work if the school has a library - which is missing in 1 in 4 UK primary schools in disadvantaged areas, where they are needed most. '
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
Have inherited some interesting shelving decisions in this new library - why is Dickens up so high? I know better than to immediately question the decisions of my predecessor. Could be a very short Dickens thieving pupil about and this is a preventative measure. #LibrarianSky #SchoolLibrarian
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Ellen @ellenoffrell.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
mixed feelings about urban foxes #poetrysky
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