Back to blogging

I'm returning to this blog after what turned out to be a three-month summer break. There were two reasons for this. Firstly the school summer holidays co-incided with a busy work period. I work as a freelance editor and always swear I am not going to take on much over the summer holidays. But projects being what they are, and authors being what *they* are things have a habit of creeping into July and August. This year I was working on a big project that was supposed to fall mainly in May, but we ended up having the meeting where the final style and structure was agreed on the last day of my children's school term! So evenings and weekends in July and early August were taken up with work.

The other reason is that I was investigating a change of plan in my return to academia. Soon after starting the blog some random surfing turned up an MA in children's literature at Roehampton University, not a million miles from where I live. I knew straight away I wanted to do it. At first I thought I would carry on with the plan to do some general arts study with the OU first, but then I decided not to let the small matter of a first degree in the humanities stop me, and applied to start in September. I hit send on the application at 10.30 pm the night before we went on holiday, and the place was confirmed a week before term started this month.

I didn't want to blog about it until I knew whether I had a place, but obviously this change of direction affected my reading over the summer. I have been keeping a list and was thinking of posting it here, but actually that's probably a bit self-indulgent. I have a few books I plan to write about in the next few days though.

I am taking the MA very part time, and only doing one course this year, on Critical and Theoretical Perspectives. So far I am very much enjoying my introduction to literary theory. Whether it has yet had any effect on my insights remains to be seen.