feather_ghyll

I've kept meaning to post about the US Open. It's been strange not to be able to watch it, but to have to check up online and on sports headlines to see what's been happening. Highlight clips aren't the same! It was particularly heartening to see Robson building on her Olympics and having such a good run in the first week. Getting beaten by a defending champion is not too shabby. ( Read more... )

However, I've been able to watch the Paralympics. After last night, it feels churlish to say that, of course, the coverage hasn't been as good as the Beeb's would have been, but I haven't been able to switch to other sports when stuff I have no interest in watching comes on etc, although I've sat gripped in front of the swimming and athletic races. Claire Baldwin is an ace, I like it when former Paralympians get all technical (for instance about how individuals' disabilities affect them and what they have to do to adjust) and the fact that we move from heats to finals (in the races) and that there are so many different categories makes it all the more explosive. Then there are the moments where you realise what these people who run or swim so fast must have to face in their daily life. There's a lot more to say about disability , elite sports, gender and a myriad things than is getting raised – there’s a consensual attitude about certain topics in the coverage that I don’t always agree with, although if both the Games get girls who thought they weren’t able to ‘do sports’ to get up/out and exercise more, that is a good thing. But then, while the Paralympics are going on, sports coverage is tending back towards the belief that what the boys and their managers in the Premier League are doing is all that sport is, which is, frankly, depressing.

Some thoughts on the last day. ( Read more... )

Of course I caught a cold for the Easter holidays, but I did little more than read. I'll be posting fuller reviews of books about murder, heroic new girls, a school for spies and why advertising was the perfect job for a girl in the fifties while she decided whether she wanted to be a career woman or a married housewife.

I also read a generic family inherits a property about which there is a mystey story by Francis Cowen, where the family was pretty lucky that the heroine had finished school and was willing to take care of them all until she was old enough to train as a nurse (Mystery Tower) and a book that's about the production of a 'book' or collection of stories by friends (A Job for the Jays) for another chum. Each chapter contains one of these stories, which the friends all criticise e.g. for contrivance. I couldn't make out if these were stories the author was trying to get rid of somehow because they hadn't sold off. It didn't seem to me as if each stories was saying much about the supposed author, as I couldn't differentiate between the Jays (all girls with names starting with 'J'.) Peculiar. (A Job for the Jays).

Before the end of 2011, I finally created an account on Dreamwidth, which I’ve wanted to do for a while given all the ups and downs with Livejournal over the last year in particular. My plan is for everything to mirrored at both sites, so my presence at Livejournal will remain the same, but if you are on Dreamwidth, let me know your details and I’ll add you. I haven’t gone entirely wild over having more icons...yet!

My house is topsy turvy at present, as I finally got someone to put in shelves for me. It hasn't quite turned out to be the ceiling to floor extravaganza of my imagination, but it will mean more storage space once I get them varnished. I am not sure when this is going to happen and I'm really dubious about my ability to do it neatly, but I'm still at the stage of looking at my alcoves and oohing over shelves that weren't there before, so I'm not letting that daunt me. Of course, this means that furniture is all over the place, sawdust will be haunting corners of my house for weeks, and there are piles of boxes of books and piles of books all over. I suspect that all the new shelves will alleviate the problem, but not fully resolve it. However, I am serious about sorting through my books, even if I'll be doing it at tortosie-like speed. As my carrot, I am sure that doing so will help me find the Eba Ibbotson books I seem to have misplaced. I am also excited about putting books that are generically linked together on my new shelves.

Last week, I was forced to watch the athletics as the tennis isn’t being aired on Freeview (so I'm only haphazardly aware of which women’s seeds are out and have to take others’ words for Djokovic, Murray et al’s form). I use 'forced' very loosely. I only really got into the athletics world championships after they’d changed presenters – I did see Bolt’s 100m false start. But I found myself getting into it – it helped that many semis were on the same days as the finals, so there was just enough build-up. I’m going to have to put watching female athletes triumph on the list of things that make me teary (I thought it was a women’s tennis grand slam finals thing, where the build up of how they got there and then the moment when whoever wins realises what she’s done, celebrates and thanks her team has wrung a tear or two from me. Increasingly so over the years). So there were intense Russians, the javelin and SALLY PEARSON. Iwan Thomas's commentary turning into cheering on Greene and English was refreshing. And I really like the Korean national costume.

Does anyone know why Michael Johnson appears on UK TV? Does the US not want him? Can’t it afford him?

Looking back at the last ten posts, I see I've been writing about tennis and non-fiction books, which isn't very representative. I've read quite a few books that I could have reviewed here, but didn't for one reason or another. I say "summer" because it's quite chilly and not one of these books were read on a beach.

Working backwards, here are some overviews of what I've been reading:

Casino for Sale: Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon. The further adventures of the incomprable Ballet Stroganoff, as Stroganoff buys a casino in the south of France as a setting for his ballet company. Cue murder, balletomania and lots of laughing out loud.

Journey to the River Sea: Eva Ibbotson. The first book for children by Ibbotson that I read and it shares the same quality of 'just rightness' as her other books. It also shares a setting with 'A Company of Swans'.

Aunt Dimity's Good Deed: Nancy Atherton. The cosy series in which Aunt Dimity (a kindly spectral presence in this book) helps solve crimes and relationship woes continues, with the eccentricity of the characters who people this rose-tinted England rising ever higher. I enjoyed it but there's no getting away from the fact that bits of it are really peculiar.

The Intelligence Corps Saves the Island: M. Frow. (A sequel to 'The Intelligence Corps and Anna', which I see I didn't review.) The intelligence corps are two sets of twins and a dog. There are echoes of Swallows and Amazons and the Famous Five to this book, set at the end of a summer holiday in south-west Wales during the second world war. I wouldn't really recommend this, but I would the other three.

I came home to ( Read more... )

I saw the end of the first set of Nadal vs. Mueller ( Read more... )