All these things that I have done

Am putting the finishing touches to plans for my first week at new school. Trying not to be too nervous - and being helped by the cats who have been doing lots of keeping me company while I work. Even as we speak, Clare is headbutting my fingers, suggesting that rather than typing, I should be stroking. Alex came in and helped me finish off the classroom on Friday and that is now looking really up to scratch. There's still a few things to sort out (and a few that I forgot to order) but there's two days of inset to get that sorted out in. I'm sure it'll all be fine, but I'm definitely in keyed up anticipation mode.

Have managed to have quite a good holiday over all - not much time definitively off, but quite a lot of time for being relaxed and doing reading as well as getting things done. I finished The Grace Of Kings and quite enjoyed it, although not enough to immediately start on the next one in the series. It definitely had charm, and I liked Kuni (although the book lets him off his collaborator past very easily). I could have done with spending rather less time with Mata, tbh, as he felt pretty lacking in redeeming features from the get go, although I did occasionally feel sorry for him. Still, it definitely had something to it. It felt not unakin to Song of Fire & Ice actually, in that it's attempting to tell a grand, sweeping story about a time of dramatic upheaval and to give you both an overview and a sense of active involvement in the action. It doesn't give you the same depth of character as SOFAI but, on the other hand, the level of gratuitous violence is considerably less and the story manages not to get bogged down and then lost up it's own arse, so I would say it's more successful. Actually, now I've made the comparison, I can definitely see this as a TV series - it's very episodic.

Am very sad to hear that Diana Wynne Jones has died. I loved and still love her books and have been reading The Lives Of Christopher Chant to my class (with a very positive response). Fire and Hemlock has remained one of my favourite books to this day. There's not a lot to usefully say in this post, but I wanted to record how much I valued her work, and, I suppose, express my condolences to those who were close to her.

To Phillip Pullman, who has just won the Whitbread award - the first childrens author to do so! A brief word of warning though. The book that won (The Amber Spyglass) is book 3 of a trilogy - to start from the beginning read Northern Lights. They're fantastic books although I think Northern Lights is actually my fave. Check them out :)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/arts/newsid_1776000/1776393.stm