"I just can't Quidditch you...."

I'm falling embarrassingly behind in my books-read count for the year, thanks to Netflix bingewatching at the gym. (As I mentioned the other day, President Soze ended the third Series 3 HOC episode by pissing off Putin; the fourth ended with him taking a couple of swings at God, including a horrid pun to end the thing.)  I did start Shawn Colvin's memoir on my tablet while taking the hellish trip back from New York, but yesterday I had to return J.K. Rowling's first non-Potter novel after its three-week loan expired.

And I couldn't.  As I waited to turn onto the street with the library, I checked the due date, saw I'd incurred no fine yet, and decided to give it another 21 days to let the magic happen.  Maybe I'm being too harsh in dismissing the Houses and Covens of Pagford and Yarvil; after all, Jo hasn't had to work out a backstory for her characters for close to 20 years now, and it may just take longer for this lot to come together and become memorable.

It also doesn't help that she was helped, for so much of the HP series, by the near-simultaneous release of the eight films during the seven-book run. I can't even guess which actors would take on some of these roles, but by the time I came to the Potter party, two or three books in, the cast had already been assembled and it was easier to see the characters in my mind's eye with the likes of Harris, Smith and Rickman already attached to them.

At least there are no precocious kids in this one. Yet.