My advice to you: if you get nominated for an Oscar, don’t play it cool. Not the first time it happens, anyway. In the event of multiple nominations over several years, you’re allowed to skip a couple of parties; if you’re a novice, however, you should really make the effort. I did, and I don’t regret a second of it.

Impressions of the weekend, in no particular order: our producer, Finola Dwyer an Oscar nominee too – on the verge of being escorted from the Kodak Theatre after a ticketless visit to the toilet, moments before the ceremony started; T-Bone Burnett and Michael Giacchino, musical geniuses both, deep in conversation at the Vanity Fair party, statuettes dangling casually from their hands; my new friend Geoffrey Fletcher’s genuine incomprehension when it was announced that he’d won an Oscar for his Precious screenplay; Piers Morgan, penned in behind the press cordon on the red carpet (his frustration and bewilderment were almost tangible); Colin Firth, inches away from us and trying not to make eye-contact, as he read the Academy’s tribute to ‘An Education’ from the autocue; Carey Mulligan’s face as the acceptance speeches for Best Documentary Short, the category she was presenting, degenerated into an unfortunate but amusing farce. (There was, apparently, some ill-will between the producer and the director.) And, inevitably, I was directly involved in a great deal of A-list celebrity obsequiousness, although I will spare the blushes of the A-list celebrities involved. (They might not want people to know that they suck up to writers.) Disappointingly, just about everyone I met over the last six months has been lovely, or at least faultlessly polite. There is only one fellow nominee I wouldn’t be pleased to run into again, and that was someone I had expected to like.

And now it’s over. I haven’t really written anything since I finished ‘Juliet, Naked’, a year ago, and though I will miss being in the same room as Meryl Streep, it’s time to get back to work. It may not be what I do best (I’m actually pretty good at being in the same room as Meryl Streep), but it’s what I get paid for.

So far, 2010 has been eaten away by ‘An Education’, but after the Oscars, it’s back to work. I’m going to concentrate on two or three film and TV projects this year, all of which are at very early stages. I have, however, returned to my ‘Stuff I’ve Been Reading’ column in The Believer, I’m happy to say, after eighteen months away. I’m racing through David Kynaston’s brilliant Austerity Britain, almost certainly to the bemusement of the young American readers of the magazine. Serves them right. Meanwhile, Ben Folds is mixing ‘our’ album, which should be out in the spring. And Juliet, Naked is out now in paperback.

Nick Hornby will be joining us LIVE this Thursday lunchtime to answer all YOUR burning questions on AuthorsLive.

Everything you ever wanted to ask one of the best writers in the UK, Nick Hornby can be answered LIVE at the click of a mouse. Get chatting about his new novel, Juliet, Naked, his film, An Education, out later this month, and there may be a bit of football in there too. Or maybe you want to know where Nick gets his ideas from? Does he use a pen or a computer? Or where does he write? All these and hopefully more interesting questions too!

Store your questions up, and make a date with Nick Hornby on AuthorsLive, 12 noon BST on Thursday 15th October and see Nick answer your questions, LIVE.

I’m off for a couple of weeks to the US, to read from ‘Juliet, Naked’.
Please, PLEASE come and say hello:

September 29th in New York
Barnes & Noble ­ Union Square, 7:00 PM

September 30th in Boston
Brookline Booksmith, 6:00 PM
Location: Coolidge Theater

October 1st in Washington, DC
Politics & Prose, 7:00 PM

October 6th in Los Angeles
Book Soup, 7:30 PM
Location: Skirball Cultural Center

October 7th in El Cerrito, CA
Barnes & Noble ­ El Cerrito, 7:00 PM

October 8th in San Francisco
City Arts & Lectures, 8:00 PM
Location: Herbst Theater

October 9th in Seattle
Elliott Bay Book Company, 7:00 PM
Location: Seattle Public Library

That gap between the 1st and the 5th . . . I’m not skiving. ‘An Education’ premieres then – and opens in New York and LA on October 9th.

Last night, at the ‘Juliet, Naked’ signing in Selfridges, a nice woman told me that we’d met before, a few years ago, at another event.
“You gave me some advice when I was applying to college.”
“What did I say?”
“I had two choices, and you told me to go for the less prestigious one because I’d enjoy the work more.”
“What did you do?”
“I ignored you, and went to the more prestigious one.”
“And?”
“I hated every moment of it.”
We both laughed uproariously, but inside, I was seething. Really, what is the point of dispensing rabbinical wisdom if you people are just going to take no notice? If you’re coming to an event over the next few weeks, in the UK and the US, with the express purpose of asking me for my guidance in professional or matrimonial matters, I really must insist that you do what I say, otherwise the whole thing is a waste of my time and yours. (There may be a simple but legally binding document for you to sign.) And if you wish to talk about relationship matters, please bring your partner with you. I can’t be expected to decide whether you should marry somebody without all the necessary facts at my disposal.

Juliet, Naked signing on Wednesday 16th September at 5.30-6.30pm at W H Smiths, Selfridges, 400 Oxford Street, London, W1A 1AB.

There are two readings next week. One is in London on Tuesday, 7.30pm, at the Bloomsbury St Hotel (tickets £5.00, available for Waterstone’s in Gower St); the other is on Sunday at 1.30pm at the Enwave theatre in Toronto, Canada. No offence to the people of Toronto, nor indeed to the people of London, but I wish the two events were on the same continent at least. Oh, well.

So ‘Juliet, Naked’ is published today (I think); promotion for the novel and for ‘An Education’, in the US, UK and Europe, means that I won’t be doing any writing for three months or so. That’s a big chunk of a working year gone, especially if you throw in the month-long summer holiday I’ve just taken.

I don’t read reviews – editors and other interested parties know that they have to provide a summary in one word or less, and, if the one word is a word I don’t want to hear, the name of the bastard responsible. So far, the reviews seem to have been good or OK, with one notable exception: the review in the Times was, apparently, hostile. It’s not often that a bad review provokes amusement in its victim, but this one did, because the Times paid quite a lot of money to run extracts of the book, over three days; the bad review ran bang in the middle of the run. Times readers must have been very confused – why were they being asked to plough on with a novel that had just been rubbished by one of their book critics? If you’re going to get a thumping, then it might as well happen in a way that leaves the paper looking silly.

Tuesday 8th September

Nick Hornby in conversation with Rachel Cooke from 7:30pm at the Bloomsbury Street Hotel, 9-13 Bloomsbury Street, London, WC1B 3QD.

Tickets £5 available from Waterstone’s, 82 Gower Street, London WC1E 6EQ 020 7636 1577.

Monday 21st September

Juliet, Naked event at Topping Books at 7.15 for 7.30pm start at Topping & Company, The Paragon, Bath, BA1 5LS .

Tickets £6 with £6 off the book, available from the bookshop or on (01225) 428111.

 Thursday 15th October

Joint event at 6:15pm with Lynn Barber at the Birmingham Book Festival prior to a showing of ‘An Education’ at the Electric Cinema, 47-49 Station Street, Birmingham B5 4DY. Lynn and Nick will be introduced by Tom Lawes the cinema owner.

Solo event at 8:15pm about ‘Juliet, Naked’ at the Birmingham Book Festival at the Conservatoire, Paradise Place, Birmingham, B3 3HG.

Call the Box office on 0121 303 2323 or visit www.birminghambookfestival.org for more information.

… I am now on full-time publicity duty. If you ever see the Times, Word, Q, Esquire, the Financial Times, the Sunday Telegraph or about a hundred other English-language publications, you will be able to read the attempts of a number of nice, patient journalists to get me to say something articulate and interesting, initially about ‘Juliet, Naked’ or ‘An Education’, and then, as desperation sets in, about anything at all.

This morning, however, there was a welcome reminder that there will be life after this. One of the current side-projects is an animated feature film entitled ‘The Babymakers’, set inside the human body. As with everything else in the world of cinema, there is only the remotest possibility of this ever happening. But at the moment my occasional co-writer Giles Smith and I are working with Airside Studios and Fred Deakin (of Lemon Jelly fame) on a three or four minute sample of the finished work, something called an animatic. This morning we recorded the script with Mark Williams, David Thewlis, Morwenna Banks and our girl Carey Mulligan, and it was fun – more fun, unfortunately, than interviews. There will be fun again.