Hi BritishPandaChick,
I am also new here. My site is sciencevshollywood.com. Maybe you can check my site out and tell me what you think and I will do the same for yours.

When I looked, I found it difficult figuring what the site was about. It appears that you are covering several subjects, which is not necessarily a bad thing but it leaves your visitors feeling that you may not have put any effort into it, or that your site is still being constructed.

I think there are several ways you can fix this. For one, you can change the background but more importantly, you can change the menu items to reflect what the site is all about. If there are recipes, then put that as a menu item. If there are books, put that as well. That will help people know what the site is about and find what they need to easily.

Hope that helps.