So, apart from getting up 3 1/2 hours later than is usual during a term week, haven't done much at all this half-term. Didn't go to Whitby. At some point I was thinking of finally paying a visit to Barbarella in Lanzarote, Instead, I've done many of my usual lessons (but this at least means money coming in instead of going out) and read a lot, finally finishing a couple of the books I'd been reading, including Ian Banks' 'Wasp Factory' which had some grisly uncomfortable disturbing bits but was on the whole much better, I felt, than a lot of the science fiction stuff of his that I've read.. the ending is indeed, and unusually, as I think asw909 had said, a really unexpected, unpredictable one.

The other book I've been reading is the second instalment of the Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson. The premise and setting of the book are very interesting, the genesis of scientific thought before it had that name or had divorced from alchemy and the rivalry between Newton and Leibniz. It does get a bit long, though -and I've been warned that the third book in the trilogy is very much a stodgy brick. We'll see.

Tags: books, stuff