Tennis:She is the unseeded seven-time grand slam event winner tearing her way through the Australian Open field with wanton abandon, but Serena Williams still cannot bring herself to read the reams of column inches she generates.
Injuries restricted her to just 16 matches on tour in 2006, but only eight matches into her 2007 campaign she finds herself one win away from a ninth appearance in a grand slam final.
She looked back to her combative best today when she came through 3-6 6-2 8-6 against Israel's 16th seed Shahar Peer to book a semi-final place against Czech 10th seed Nicole Vaidisova.
There was little warning of what was to come when she crashed out in the quarter-finals in Hobart to Austrian Sybille Bammer, having opted to prepare for her Melbourne Park tilt at the lower tier event at the start of the month.
Now four seeds have been left floundering in her wake as she stands close to the pinnacle once again, but she still refuses to join in the media frenzy following her astonishing rejuvenation.
"I don't read anything, I don't want to be like one of those celebrities walking around just so full of themselves," the world number 81 said after dispatching Peer in the quarter-finals.
"One time in '99 I read this article, it was really good. I was like 'You're the bomb', I just got too headstrong. I always want to be down to earth.
"When my career is over - I've been saving a lot of articles - I'll go back and read them."
The 25-year-old, champion in Melbourne in 2003 and 2005, does not reject all reading matter, often choosing the changeovers in matches not to reflect on tactics or bad shotmaking, but on a certain bespectacled wizard.
"I love to read, I read all the Harry Potter novels. I am not reading the last one because I was crying at the last one I read. I'm not going to read anymore, I get too emotionally involved," she said.
"I'm just happy to be playing again, most of all I'm happy I won't be ranked number 81 anymore. Whatever happens I'm ready to compete for the rest of the year and years to come."