no sharks here

 My eyes were squinted against the blazing sun as I bobbed in the cooling waters made blue by the mosaic pool liner. I could imagine, especially with the blue sky, that I was in the Caribbean floating in the enormous sea. With no potential for shark bite.

The weather has been unsettled for days now so I took my chances and uncovered the sofa on the deck, settling back with some books. I finished ‘Everybody Lies’, which was an interesting discussion on using big data for social science research. Then I bounced around between Canadian literary authors Alice Munroe and Hugh Mclennen, with a little detour to William Zinsser’s ‘Writing to Learn’. 

Now that I’ve got the library app on my tablet, the options are endless, although ‘Writing to Learn’ is only a sample from Google Books - it’s not in the library. I’ve read other books about writing authored by William Zinsser and have been inspired by his prose. I might fork out the money!

As I lay suspended by the cool water I pondered my love for all things blue & white and how they recall the contrast between blue sky and white clouds. They are the colours of summer, the colours of languid days and cooling waters.

Yesterday I downloaded the Alice Munroe book and revelled in her mastery of the language and her ability to draw me into the hard-scrabble lives of the characters. Her use of punctuation and sentence structure moves her stories along as much as the words. It’s brilliant but also awful. Her characters are flawed and their lives are often desperate with poverty which makes for an uncomfortable read. I vacillate between awe and depression. She’s one of my favourite authors but one that I can only read for short periods.

Awesome!

“hot humid day”

“smoked salmon wrapped in lettuce from the garden”