Books are my business: I work as a freelance writer, translator and editor. If you’d like to get in touch about a project, book or recommendation, I’d love to hear from you via one of the following:
Thank you for visiting The Monthly Booking.
Here’s a bit more about what to expect from this blog and the person behind it.
About Me
My name is Eleanor and I’m a freelance writer, translator and proofreader/copy-editor. I come from the UK but have lived in Austria since 2015, currently in the beautiful city of Vienna.
Alongside working as a ghostwriter, copywriter and proofreader or editor, including for UK publishing houses, I’m a commercial and emerging literary translator from German to English. I’m keen to promote Austrian literature to an English-speaking audience in particular, and especially love cross-border literature – the kind of writing that comes from multilingual, in-between lands like South Tyrol and the Slovenian-Austrian border region.
I have a huge appetite for translated literature (from any language) and love reading my way around the world. I’m a dedicated traveller and – thanks in part to a previous life as an on-the-ground data researcher – have visited more than fifty countries, including more unusual suspects like Liberia and Turkmenistan. While German is the only language I currently translate from, over the course of my life I’ve also studied Russian, Spanish, French, Japanese and Serbian/Croatian.
When it comes to reading, my tastes tend towards the literary end of the fiction spectrum, and I’ve recently developed a bit of a thing for short stories. I also enjoy reading non-fiction – on almost any subject; I love to learn – and while I do tend to choose a lot of contemporary novels at the moment, I read plenty of classics during my degree and am slowly trying to introduce them back to my reading pile.
About This Blog
The Monthly Booking focuses on translated literature, German fiction and books from independent publishers, but does extend far beyond these genres. Every month I pick four titles – one fiction, one non-fiction, one work in translation, and one book from an independent publisher – although in reality I read a lot more than just these. Sometimes I have a theme, sometimes not, and most often the categories will overlap with one another. You’ll find all the lists and why I chose these books in the Monthly Reading Lists section, and book reviews of these and other titles are uploaded throughout the month.
As a translator, I read widely in German and review these books too. Some have already been translated into English; many haven’t, but I think these ones deserve to be.
And finally, I write occasional reviews of (mostly) independent bookshops around the globe, plus articles on independent presses, podcasts, book subscription services and general news from the literary and/or translation world.
I always love book recommendations, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch using the links on the left!
The Monthly Booking 