Miss Oh Waily Update

Just thought I would share a few new photographs.

As of tomorrow I will be 20 months old.
I have a vocabulary of about 40 baby signs, and a verbal vocabulary of nearly that in partial words.
For example:  "Pa" = "Patches" (toy bear); "Sha" = Santa (don't ask why Mum hasn't put away the Christmas santas yet); "Hah" = Ham, etc.
Now all I'm waiting for is the second syllable to arrive.  I think it must have missed it's bus.

I like painting, and wiping my hands on Mummy when she's not paying enough attention.  I like Hi-5, which is slightly worrying, but useful when Mum and Dad need peace to make dinner.  I like ham, cheese and crackers.  In fact Mum & Dad are beginning to wonder if they should invest in a cracker factory.  Sadly cracker rationing has been implemented in order that other yummy snacks like grapes and bananas can get a look in.
I'm pretty darn clever with my alphabet jigsaw and can happily place all of them in the right holes.  I understand that P is for Patches (see above), T is for Teddy, D is for Daddy, M is for Mummy, B is for Benny (smallest canine) and that each of them must wear their letter on their chests (or back, in Benny's case) before it is put into the appropriate slot.

I did my first intentional forward roll a couple of days ago (on Mum & Dad's bed) and I have nearly all of my teeth - only the bottom canines and all of the back molars to come.  I like going to daycare for a couple of hours twice a week, so much so that I barely take notice of when Mum leaves.

And that's a short summary of where I'm at.  So here are some photographs for you.

Where Should You Be Living?

According to the Facebook quiz of the same name, I should be domiciled in Rome.

Unfortunately Mr OWW seems to be destined for San Francisco.  I'm sure he'll get used to the commute.  ;-)

Booknotes

There has been another gaping hole in my life recently, to go along with the lack of blog entries.
Little or no reading has been partaken in for the past month.

Still, I am now attempting to remedy that situation and while at the library the other night picked up a few Booknotes, the quarterly journal of the New Zealand Book Council. I was hoping to find some inspiration for my ongoing reading, but what I got was a series of interesting articles about writing, reading, reviewing and things to do with creative written arts in general. Included is a section called "The School Library", which will turn out to be quite handy for Miss Oh Waily's next possible reading entertainment.

What I actually wanted to share with you were one or two opinions from the first issue that passed over my bedside table.

The first paragraph, from Linley Boniface's essay A Wall of Books Around The Borders Of My Bed, stirred up a good deal of conflict for me.  Regular readers will know that I have set myself the challenge of reading all of the Booker and Pulitzer prize-winning novels as well as the BBC Top 200.  Known around the OhWaily blog as the Booklitzer Challenge 200.  And as I have bemoaned in some of the reviews of these books, I have found more than one to be hard work and more a labour of persistence than of love.  Here's the quote for you to consider:

I am an unashamedly unadventurous and intolerant reader: if a writer fails to deliver immediately, there are no second chances.  Friends will give a book 30 or even 100 pages to prove itself, which strikes me as madness.  Why plough doggedly through an indifferent book, when you know you'll die leaving so many great books unread?

The emphasis on the last question is mine.  And the cause of my conflict.  Should I 'plough doggedly' through the Booklitzer 200 because someone, somewhere thought they were the best books to be read in that given year?  Should I just give in and chuck them back on the pile having given them their 30 or 100 pages of grace?

How do I know, like reading The Siege of Krishnapur, that it may take half the book to get to the really interesting and gripping bit?  How do I expand my taste and understanding of the wide world of literature if I don't plough through some of these harder works?  Or am I just fooling myself and wasting my minimal free time on indifferent books?

The second excerpt is from Tim Corballis' piece The Writing We Don't Hear.  Most of this went over my head as it is a comparative piece about how we understand and 'listen' to music versus how we do the equivalent 'listening' to what we are reading.  Eventually this led to ideas on ...the possibilities of  'contrapuntal' writing...
But the crucial point in this essay is a section of the penultimate paragraph.

To think in terms of structure is to forget, for a time, the reader's need to understand - either that or to count on another sort of understanding.  It is to require more and different work from the reader.  Are readers allergic to such work - to literary difficulty itself?  If so, then this is a counterproductive allergy, and one that I think writers should be brave enough to challenge.

So, here we find the alternative view.  Different structural approaches to writing a novel should not be off-putting to the reader, if the reader wishes to be challenged by literature.

Is this a little high-minded?  Or is the other view a little too low-brow?  Personally I don't mind the odd challenge, but sometimes it feels like surviving the challenge brings no real reward.

Feedback on this issue is most welcome.  In the meantime, I have another two Booker winners piled up on the bedside table, so I haven't caved in immediately.