SPOILERS FOLLOW
It's amazing how much you can do with a 600-page book in one hand, writes Richard Lea. Make tea. Turn the washing machine on. Eat lunch. Make tea.
Ruth's up to page 183 and it's still "pretty good", but she's worried about Professor Dumbledore. "One of my friends heard that something was going to happen to him and I think he's right," she says. I can't think where he might have got that from ...
She also thinks it's "a bit much" that Fleur Delacour is "interfering" with the Weasleys so much - though perhaps we should bear in mind her admission that she doesn't much "like the kissing stuff" here.
So she may have to brace herself for chapter 14, where hot blood seemed to flood my brain as a monster roared in my stomach. No, that was Harry, whose adolescent urges seem to be troubling him. Much more of this and it'll put me right off my dinner.
A series of flashbacks has begun, courtesy of Dumbledore and a thing called a Pensieve. Each one is carefully framed with explanations and some helpful commentary - none of your modernist trickery here - but at least the incidents have a little more zip than the Quidditch. Harry and Ron duly pull it out of the bag at the last moment, thanks to some cunning psychological trickery, and Gryffindor triumph again.
But perhaps Quidditch is one of the quiddities that makes Rowling's world believable. Ruth's a fan.
