So I went to see Beauty and the Beast last night in the Olympia with some lovely friends of mine; some thoughts follow: ( spoilers, if such things apply to Disney musicals )

Every year, standing outside the Larkin in a this-is-me-attempting-to-look-grown-up-and-vaguely-responsible-yet-also-young-and-groovy sort of outfit, it feels like summer comes around way too often. Didn't I just hear one of those speeches rounding off the course? Didn't I just do that round of parent-teacher meetings on the Friday morning, trying to find the perfect spot in the canteen to commandeer for the next three hours?

It's exhuasting and fabulous and the best place in the world to work. And this year we had a very groovy literary day. (Okay, so I was not so much 'visiting' as 'the only one double-jobbing', being absurdly delighted when Roddy Doyle and Julia Kelly reiterated the things I'd been telling my students for the previous fortnight when answering questions about 'writer's block'.) The readings were all great, with students especially adoring Paul Howard morphing into the infamous Ross; writing is not performing and it's always amazed me how people assume that all writers will be 100% comfortable in front of a crowd when they spend so much time cut off from civilization frantically typing up the world that lives inside their head. Come to think of it, it's a miracle so many of them actually are at ease in front of a live audience... or in public at all.

So that and coaxing nineteen students into co-writing a 64,000-word first draft of a novel in two days is what I've been up to. Pretty much. And listing favourites for the Indo. I can't believe how much of the summer's gone by already, but I'm blaming the weather at least partially for that; it's like one of those people who forget to turn the pages of the calendar and think it's April in August. I am looking at you, ridiculous rain...

Dr Horrible's Singalong Blog is a work of evil genius. Songs and superheroes and supervillains and frozen yoghurt and more songs. Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion are fantastic as Dr Horrible and Captain Hammer respectively.

Main Street #4: Best Friends - Ann M Martin
Main Street #5: The Secret Book Club - Ann M Martin
How They Met - David Levithan
The Last Summer (of You & Me) - Ann Brashares
Denial - David Belbin
Stick Figure - Lori Gottlieb
My Sister Jodie - Jacqueline Wilson
Get Well Soon - Julie Halpern
Marly's Ghost - David Levithan

So evidently I'm loving the Main Street series, Babysitters Club eat your heart out. One of the appealing things is, I think, that the characters are actually - shock, horror! - growing up, and generally it's reminding me of early-BSC days, when the books were not being produced at a furious pace and the ghostwriters were dragged in, but when time moved along and there was a lot of pretty cool stuff happening. Anyway, yes, I have been sucked in to the world of Camden Falls, and am loving Flora in particular (awww).

Next up, David Levithan, with the collection of short stories on the one hand and the Christmas Carol remix on the other. Both of which are adored and are very Levithanish.

Another David: Belbin. Denial is short and twisty and dark and I liked it and it creeped me out. (You'd think that with all the Point Crime books you'd be expecting that, but still...)

I didn't like The Last Summer (of You & Me), which lacked the charm of the Traveling Pants books entirely. Character motivation, where were you?

Two quick reads in diary-esque format: Stick Figure and Get Well Soon, both based on personal experience. Anorexia and depression, cheerful topics, right? But handled well, and they're both funny and page-turny. Stick Figure, which touts itself as memoir rather than fiction-based-on-truth, has a nice little epilogue which analyses but doesn't fill the reader in on after the event, or the long-term recovery, which was something I wanted from both books.

Finally, Jacqueline Wilson's My Sister Jodie - one I've been meaning to read since it came out, and one which I knew the ending of anyway, and knowing the ending makes you very aware of how well put-together it is in terms of foreshadowing and theme and all the rest. Plus it's about a boarding school, which is win-win, really.

I also finished reading Dracula after forever and a day, but the less said about that, the better. (Except that surely this has got to be one of those books that disproves that rubbish about films 'never being as good as' the source text. The Dracula myth, the Dracula concept, the variations on the theme - these are fabulous. The book itself is the most tedious piece of painful Victorian writing ever. Also, it's a bit Mary-Sue-ish that Van Helsing's first name is Abraham, surely?)

Next week I am off to teach the Novel Writing course again, which will hopefully be oodles of fun. Off I go to reread my notes, and the Work of Genius that last year's class produced...

This tennis thing is totally lost on me. All I know about the game is that Roger Federer is apparently like Lancelot. And that is from a second-year English course in which the lecturer kept making this comparison, one which I think was supposed to work the other way for students. Is this wretched match over yet? Will it last forever? At what point will it be appropriate to make comparisons to cricket? Questions, questions...

(I did read a story which had tennis in it today, but that was different and it was craftily about other things also so that even the sports-clueless like myself could still appreciate it.)

Here, for any of you subscribed to the Irish Times online thingy, is a feature on the Irish Writers' Centre, and the services it provides, and the prettiness of the building.

So I've been reading. (Oh, reading!) See, for the past three years, I have been studying English diligently (ish) in Trinity, filled with dreadfully clever people who say wonderfully insightful things about literature while you sit there going, "Yes, um... themes! Let's talk about themes! Let us not talk about anything which starts with 'post' and ends in 'ism', please, oh please!" So that while doing that, there is the Guilt. Because your reading time needs to be taken up with Serious Literature. There is always, always, always more to read than you will ever be able to.

And mostly I have liked it, and not gone too crazy, and enjoyed getting to read (even if it's speed-reading) some of the Classic Books which would otherwise sit on my bookshelves gathering dust, and all that, but at the same time it's not something I'm particularly great at nor do I think it's something which is particularly useful in terms of writing. (Not that I expected it to be, but you tell people you write and they go, 'ah, you study English! But of course!') My point is that I sat my final English exams a few weeks ago, am currently hoping for not having messed them up too badly with what became an increasingly low tolerance for Shakespearean criticism and all that Bard-worship, and from now on all my novel-reading gets to be leisure reading, which is quite groovy. (This also means I get to do nothing-but-history next year, which is somewhere between terrifying and exhilarating. Apparently I've bought into the whole 'but I write! I must do English!' thing.)

With that in mind, anyway, recently-read books-for-fun:

The Nature of Jade - Deb Caletti
The Abstinence Teacher - Tom Perrotta
The Sealed Letter - Emma Donoghue
Anatomy of a Boyfriend - Daria Snadowsky
Perfect Match - Jodi Picoult
The British Museum Is Falling Down - David Lodge
This Charming Man - Marian Keyes
The Squad: Perfect Cover - Jennifer Lynn Barnes
The Squad: Killer Spirit - Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Main Street: Welcome to Camden Falls - Ann M Martin
Main Street: Needle and Thread - Ann M Martin
Main Street: 'Tis the Season - Ann M Martin
Change of Heart - Jodi Picoult
The Uncommon Reader - Alan Bennett
You Know Where To Find Me - Rachel Cohn
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac - Gabrielle Zevin
Someday Angeline - Louis Sachar
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks - E Lockhart

Looking over these I realise there are very few new-to-me authors on the list. Anatomy of a Boyfriend is a debut, and I really enjoyed reading it. Someday Angeline was the first Louis Sachar I've ever read (sacrilege, I know), but I liked it, and I can see why his writing appeals to younger readers. The teacher-stuff, and the father-stuff, is spot-on.

The Nature of Jade was the second Deb Caletti book I've read (the first was Wild Roses, and I adore the way she writes. Elephant trivia plus a love story plus panic disorders, yay! Her characters feel real and never overly gimmicky. (I suppose I mean the kind who have been given one obvious quirk and that's that.) And Tom Perrotta's The Abstinence Teacher is the fourth or fifth of his that I've read - I was worried, with the subject matter (abstinence sex-ed in American schools, and religious groups), that I would find a lot of it unpalatable, but ( spoilers )

Emma Donoghue's The Sealed Letter is her first novel-length foray into the nineteenth century, and based on a real-life divorce case. Thoroughly researched and thoroughly gorgeous. Keeping with the Irish-women-writers theme, I guess, Marian Keyes' This Charming Man is one of her best. ( Spoilers )

I started David Lodge's The British Museum is Falling Down at the beginning of the academic year. It sat by my bedside from the start of October until the end of May, this thin little book that I had plans of reading one-chapter-at-time before sleeping every night. I am not a one-chapter-at-a-time sort of reader. So I finally finished it and I liked it, though I am not nearly well-read enough to be able to identify the literary pastiches throughout apart from the very last one. But as I may have mentioned a hundred or so times previously, I adore David Lodge. So. Yes.

I always enjoy Jodi Picoult, though I had been advised by celeria who is wise in such matters, that Perfect Match was not particularly wonderful, and ( spoilers ) Change of Heart reminded me a little of Keeping Faith ( spoilers )

Series fiction! Jennifer Lynn Barnes' The Squad books have cheerleader secret agents, enough said really. And Ann M Martin's new series Main Street is so far avoiding the infamous 'chapter 2' thing of The Babysitters Club. I'm enjoying the books - I've read the first three so far.

Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader is a lovely little novella about what happens when the Queen takes up reading. And finally, the latest YA fiction from Rachel Cohn, Gabrielle Zevin, and E Lockhart is all smart, fantastic, and well worth reading. Briefly: suicide, amnesia, the panopticon. Gotta love it. Oh, reading.

Well, on the one hand, I don't feel qualified to go into a big discussion about the recent 'no' vote and all that jazz. I still, despite voting, don't feel like an expert on the issues.

On the other hand, a lack of accurate information didn't particularly seem to bother the 'no' campaigners. So.

I think it is inherently problematic to hold a referendum, however much it is legally necessary, on something for which one particular outcome is needed. I am very very glad to live in a democracy. I suppose the problem with democracy is that you hope that the voters are, well, sensible.

So. Sorry about the mess, Europe.

So given that the book is about Leaving Cert students, and that all the newspapers in the country are obsessing over that particular exam this fortnight or so, I've found myself yammering on about it when doing radio interviews or - this is embarrassing, this - advice thingies for newspapers.

Because when you're doing the wretched things, there is really nothing anyone can say that will take away from the fact that you have to sit the exams. It's annoying on the one hand to hear all the 'ah it's so stressful' stuff (yes, so what are you going to do about it? Nothing? Oh. Right so.) and the 'don't put too much pressure on yourself' nonsense (amidst pages of national newspaper coverage every day) and 'stay calm' (useless!) and on the other the 'it's not the end of the world' stuff (not helpful! At all!). Everything is annoying, mostly because it's from people who aren't sitting the exams at the time, or if they are, they're probably in a different situation (Exam Diary people are not normal people, dammit.)

For those reading these outside of the Emerald Isle, I should explain that - again, national newspapers - make a point of getting students sitting the exams to provide them with daily updates on how it's all going. This year's choice by the Irish Times is someone on their third attempt at the exams in an attempt to get into medicine and who seems to spend an awful lot of time talking about clothes and shoes and such like. Oh, they do have a knack for picking the ones students will relate to... sigh.

And hence I do feel a little bit, well, icky, when contributing in even a little way to the ongoing newspaperiness. Because even though I hate the 'it'll all be fine' mantra stuff, and even though I am still in that exam-sitting time of my life, it's always a ah, looking back... sort of condescension even with the very best of intentions. It's from someone who doesn't have to do their Leaving Cert right now. Which is annoying. Or at least it was for me. But then again I was one of those people who read the newspaper stuff obsessively and then got annoyed over it all. (Those of you who have read Big Picture may have guessed this. Ahem.) It was a good procrastination technique.

I am fascinated by exams and the craziness that takes over. Because we know, we all know, that they're not the most important thing in life. But at the time, and in any culture that places a premium on quantifiable success, they seem like it. It always bothers me that on the one hand there's all this nonsense about 'too much pressure' on students and on the other a glorification of those lunatics who get 9 A1s or whatever the current maximum is.

Mostly because really, one suspects, this obsession is largely because June tends to be a slow news month, in years that don't have Treaty debates or what-have-you, and it's what there is to talk about.

I don't know. I am fairly sure, however, that Ireland takes the biscuit when it comes to obsessing over school exams in the national media. (And here I go joining in...)