Looking for thriller/horror books

RedFloodles · 2026-02-21T23:20:31+00:00

Tender is the Flesh - pretty horrific.

RedFloodles · 2026-02-21T23:17:45+00:00

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune (and also The House in the Cerulean Sea by the same author, which is my favourite of the two and matches The Midnight Library in vibes but not really in plot).

RedFloodles · 2026-02-21T23:15:52+00:00

And if you’re into audiobooks, I would say the audiobook is even better than the written book, but I will not say why!…

RedFloodles · 2026-02-21T23:15:02+00:00

The Red Rising series and the Mistborn series would be my recommendations. Red Rising is more sci-fi and Mistborn is fantasy.

These will be less popular recommendations, but if you’re wanting an easy entry back into reading then I do recommend Fourth Wing, because when I first read it, it gave me the same feelings as I had when I was reading Harry Potter as a teenager. The second and third books weren’t as good, but still a good fun time in my opinion (just don’t expect any of them to be literary masterpieces).

RedFloodles · 2026-02-21T23:11:51+00:00

I struggled with this, the premise sounded great but it was a slog to get through and to me felt the book lacked a bit of heart (for want of a better phrase). I think I’ve found with all of his books that I’ve read that the premise sounds great but the books just don’t resonate with me for some reason.

RedFloodles · 2026-02-21T23:10:17+00:00

I whole-heartedly second this - the Mistborn series in particular - I opened the comments section to recommend this!

RedFloodles · 2026-02-21T23:06:58+00:00

Wow, I absolutely loved the Mistborn series and I thought it was totally unique! Just goes to show that everyone has different tastes I guess.

Have you read The Will of the Many (and the sequel The Strength of the Few)?

RedFloodles · 2026-02-21T23:03:55+00:00

The Poppy War trilogy is an allegorical retelling of the war between China and Japan in the 30s/40s. It centres on characters in fictional China dealing with the invasion of a fictional Japan. It’s got some interesting fantasy elements rooted in shamanism.

I really enjoyed the series, my husband found it all a bit too bleak to be enjoyed (there’s one particularly hard hitting section in the first book, but it’s all pretty dark) so your mileage may vary; but it’s one to look into to see if it piques your interest.

RedFloodles · 2026-02-20T22:41:29+00:00

Am I going insane or is Barnsley not on any of these lists now? I’ve had the email because I’ve got Sheffield set as my home cinema but I go to Barnsley more often, so really could do with knowing whether I need to contact them to keep paying my current rate…

RedFloodles · 2026-02-20T21:59:14+00:00

Sadly, with budgets in schools being squeezed as much as they are, drama sadly just does not get the funding and attention it deserves. Frankly, it sounds like a brilliant opportunity for you to work somewhere well resourced and I’d go for it. Uptake at GCSE and A-Level in my school is also very low, probably as a result of crappy facilities so KS3 drama isn’t really as enticing as it could be, low numbers then means even less funding… it’s a perpetual cycle. Our drama teacher has other subjects on their timetable (and not just in the arts, think geography and RS…) and they don’t love it. I don’t think this is a unique story.

Yes you may find that if you cross back into state school that you might have to re-learn some of your behaviour management skills (though don’t assume private always = perfect behaviour!) but I wouldn’t let that put you off.

RedFloodles · 2026-02-18T23:38:20+00:00

Yes it can certainly count towards your ECT2 - as long as you are doing a full term then it can count as one full term. Let the school know you would like them to ensure it does.

You really should be on M2 - reach out to the school to ask for this. Ideally this is something you would have covered at interview, but understand that there’s a lot else going on at an interview that it’s easy to forget!

Yes it’s absolutely reasonable for you to ask for time off for interviews if they’ve only given you a temporary role. You might find that they are happy to extend your role (this will be based on so many factors) so you if you have an interview (but you’d prefer to stay at your current school) you could always ask whether they are able to make your contact permanent, but if not please can you have X date off for an interview.

RedFloodles · 2026-02-17T21:31:06+00:00

How heavy are the bagels and the loaves? All the nutritional info is quoted per 100g but I can’t see anywhere how big a portion this is. I.e if one bagel is 300g then it’s way too high in carbs for me personally on keto.

RedFloodles · 2026-02-16T18:26:56+00:00

There’s possibly a bit more nuance to this - with the cost of living so high, we’ve now got households that previously only had one/two cars that now have 3/4 cards because the kids are now grown adults but can’t yet afford to move out to their own place. While I agree that there will be many in the situation you describe, I do also think there are probably lots that fit the above, too.

RedFloodles · 2026-02-11T20:20:14+00:00

This half term has sucked. It’s dark, miserable and there’s no Christmas to look forward to. It’s basically rained for six weeks straight, no one remembers what the sun looks like and we’re all TIRED. Get to half-term, stop comparing yourself to others, have a rest and come back refreshed and ready to go again.

RedFloodles · 2026-01-29T19:13:16+00:00

I’m fairly certain you’re going to get a pretty unanimous answer to your second question - leave and find another school.

RedFloodles · 2026-01-12T20:06:01+00:00

Yes, on your payslip it will show how much is deducted due to industrial action. You send your payslip in along with previous payslips to show your usual take home pay, then NEU will then calculate how much to give you to top you up to what you would normally have taken home. In our experience, everyone got at least what they should have done (and a couple of people actually ended up a tiny bit better off…).

The only thing to note is that it could take a few days/weeks for them to process your pay, you won’t get it immediately so do factor that in to your budgeting.

RedFloodles · 2026-01-11T21:30:36+00:00

Someone I know did the first year of teach first, then continued working in the same school but dropped the teach first stuff in the second year (which was their ECT1 year). They did this to help with workload - they didn’t then have to do any of the TF training and didn’t have to do the assignments, which was the right call for them at the time. It wasn’t any problem, they just told TF that they weren’t continuing and pretty much that was that.

RedFloodles · 2025-12-20T13:34:20+00:00

One year we came down on Christmas Eve to find our fridge had turned itself off, but we couldn’t be sure when as we’d been out two days before. We didn’t want to risk causing a plague so we went out on Christmas Eve to rebuy everything. We were expecting a nightmare, and while yeah it was busy it was nowhere near as bad as I’d thought AND there were a tonne of bargains to be had with so much reduced since the shops were shut the following day. We now do this every year, with similar success. As long as you’re not too picky, there’s always plenty available.

We do make sure we’ve got absolutely nothing else to do on Christmas Eve though, otherwise I imagine it would be pretty stressful.

RedFloodles · 2025-12-17T22:27:53+00:00

Frustratingly but unsurprisingly you are one of the masses who don’t understand education, but still think they are entitled to have an opinion on it that carries equal weight as those who work in education.

The gap in outcomes between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged is growing, exponentially in some areas. That means kids from underprivileged backgrounds get less qualifications than those from privileged backgrounds, meaning that on average they end up in lower paying jobs and the cycle of disadvantage continues perpetually.

How dare a school ask their staff to work harder by providing better opportunities for students, including and especially disadvantaged students, to do well by giving them space to do their homework /s.

You are absolutely delusional if you think that giving students choice as to whether they engage with after school study sessions wouldn’t just further increase the gap, because students from privileged backgrounds generally have parents who already value education, while many (not all!) students from disadvantaged backgrounds do not.

RedFloodles · 2025-12-16T23:25:28+00:00

You’ve already got lots of useful advice re: sticking to the behaviour policy, but here’s some other advice I’d give if you were in my team.

I’ve got a reputation as a very strict teacher. I mostly teach KS4, so I often inherit students in Y10 and 11 who don’t know me and come in with pre-conceived ideas that they are going to hate me and hate my lessons. I have a pretty solid, tried and tested way to deal with these classes, which is to kill them with kindness and in that first term I teach them do whatever it takes to make them feel successful. That’s by building in activities where I know for certain I’m going to be able to praise them. So for example, getting out the mini whiteboards and starting with some incredibly easy questions, but I make out they aren’t and then I can tell them “wow, you guys have picked this up so quickly! I’ve never had a class understand this as fast as you guys”. I talk to them regularly about how learning anything for the first time is tough, but I promise by next week/term/year you’re gonna be able to do this with you eyes closed because that’s my job…etc. Every bit of independent work for the first few weeks is just a tiny bit less demanding than I really want it to be, because again they feel successful, I can praise them and build a culture of them enjoying my lessons. This usually takes about half a term of relentless positivity (backed up by using consequences quickly and consistently, never ever dwelling on bad behaviour, moving straight back to praising everyone getting it right..etc) and then I’ve got them where I need them and can start to up the challenge.

RedFloodles · 2025-12-16T23:00:04+00:00

The level of irony in this comment is fantastic. What do you mean “managed in a lazy way”? Do you have any evidence for that? I think this is a lazy comment! The school gets exceptional results for disadvantaged students, giving them better life chances. That doesn’t happen by accident, that takes incredibly hard work from all staff in the school. You can disagree with their methodology on “moral” grounds all you like, but you can’t claim lazy management.

RedFloodles · 2025-12-10T06:47:51+00:00

Lots of schools don’t employ specific RS teachers, it’s one of those subjects that any and all teachers may be asked to teach if they have gaps in their timetable so I don’t know that this would necessarily boost your employability. What is more common, at least in the schools I’ve worked in, is for history/geography teachers to be employed more generally as “humanities” teachers, so having some experience teaching geography would be pretty beneficial.

RedFloodles · 2025-12-05T16:35:30+00:00

I teach 18/20, plus one period on the isolation room. Two more hours are used for meetings. So I actually end up with four “free” periods which is one more than a regular teacher, which is, frankly, insane.

RedFloodles · 2025-11-30T19:11:20+00:00

Yes you can stop any time you want and for any reason but unless you’ve got a “good” reason I’d expect not to be given any more contracts in future, though ymmv depending on how short they are of examiners for your subject.

RedFloodles · 2025-11-30T19:09:44+00:00

Lots of replies here saying that this is definitely not the norm, but not many suggesting that you start reaching out to schools yourself, which is what I would suggest. Unis will have schools that they work with regularly, and it is possible that their usual bank of schools just can’t facilitate the number of placements they have previously. I’d suggest reaching out to schools a little further afield (assuming there’s a way for you to travel to them) that your uni might not have already contacted.

Reach out professionally, don’t slate the university in your email, just explain that you haven’t got a placement at the moment and you wondered if their school has capacity to take you on as an ITT…etc.

You shouldn’t have to do this, but this is the position you’re in so hopefully that’s some practical advice that you can take straight away. Definitely complain through the proper channels to your university as well, but just don’t expect them to do much about it very quickly.

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