World Cup; Quidditch

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Wildflowers© Jinyoung Lee | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Wildflowers© Jinyoung Lee | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Let me be honest: I am not a contact sports fan.  American football makes me think of brain injury, and hockey makes me think of ice blades slashing faces.  To be even more honest, I do not really think of contact sports.  Ann Coulter’s recent statements, baffling as always, about how the good sportsmanship displayed by soccer teams upends the spirit of competitive sports made me especially happy to watch a few games this weekend.  Brazil vs Columbia and Netherlands vs Costa Rico.

I watched with family who were more interested than me, but the enthusiasm is infectious. It is hard not to root for the small soccer ball driven towards the goal. The first game brought the heartbreak of smashed ribs, and Brazil’s loss of a star player. The second was a firm stalemate until the penalty kicks.

That was how I meant to start the post this week, but my ideas fizzled out. That was all I watched of the World Cup, proportionately hardly worth many more paragraphs. I did though finish all of the second Robert Galbraith ( who the world knows as JK Rowling. Does everyone know that as RG she sold about 1500 copies of her book until her identity was revealed? Doesn’t quite seem fair, but then after reading most of a borrowed copy, I found myself downloading a copy to finish. The upshot was that it was a not really very good read, but strangely compelling.

World Cup, Quidditch; Quidditch, World Cup.

The clamor of morning birds

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Indira Ganesan, dawn/sunset, 2014

Indira Ganesan, dawn/sunset, 2014

 

At three? At four? When do the summer time birds begin their strident songs, their call to territory, food, enemies? It is as if I am in a jungle full of toucans, parrots, and peacocks, but it is the call of owls, finches, cardinals, and jays outside. Just now, they have quieted, but it is a  trick, for they begin again, warbling as the sun rises, as my coffee gets cold.  The birds wake the cats who in turn wake me.  I tell the cats it is too early for food, but they ignore my logic. They want to eat birds, I suppose, and poke me.  It is hours before the Sunday Times’ arrival.  In the early light, I decide to identify the tall, strong grass that has been rising steadily on the balcony.  It is quack grass.  Of course it is.  A noisome sound, an irritant to sleep. In the end, they will win, with luck, the birds and the weeds, while insomnia will fell us. Best have another cup in the face of it.

What I’m Reading this Summer

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Indira Ganesan, Summer Reading, 2014

Indira Ganesan, Summer Reading, 2014

Long before I drenched myself in eau de bug spray, donned hat and gloves to weed and plant and rethink the garden, summer has meant reading.  Three months of reading novel after novel like chocolates.  For some years, when I taught full-time, I read mysteries: Dorothy Sayer, P.D. James, Martha Grimes, Reginald Hill, all of whom featured  reoccurring detectives, who like Hercule Poirot, most always got their criminal.  That is the appeal of the mystery: a glimpse into a horrific situation in which things will be put to right, and unlike in real life, justice prevails.  Kate Atkinson’s mysteries were a special treat, because  she, like James, was literary,but warmer.   Her sad-sack detective was winningly losing directions and falling for women who treat him dishonorably.  After I read Wallender and Steig Larsson, I stopped reading mysteries.  I felt as I had run out of good ones, and Jo Nesbo did not appeal. So this summer, I amassed my books to read for pleasure, thinking now is the time for Dostoevsky, for Hilary Mantel, and the Grantas that have been piling up.  But a friend told me of a thick, fat read, made for the summer, written by JK Rowling, featuring a detective who puts it all to right.  I dug right in.  I am told it is a series.

      then then a frie