"The Uncommon Reader"

The Uncommon Reader is a fine and fun novella, a pleasure to read. Enough said about this little best seller of the year -- it is on the list of this week's Economists, ... did the NYT list also came out?

What I wanted to say a few words about, however, was my twisted declaration of reading it and the consequences.
me (changing nickname on gtalk): "a common reader" -- who said only the queen can indulge in the pleasure of reading, although only the queen's pleasure is worth documenting :)
dong (in the middle of some night): ... you read Virgina Woolf, too ?
liling (a day or two later): "dear common reader - i love Richard Russo's books"

Well, not only did I put up a cliche it seems, it's an ambiguous one as well !

hmm, the pleasure of a common reader has long been understood and elaborated. But still, why do we read? How many of us want to start writing after reading? ...

Let me just end this post with quotes from the short essay The Common Reader, Virginia Woolf. Thanks to search engines that enabled random serendipity on the web: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91c/chapter1.html
" The common reader, as Dr. Johnson implies, differs from the critic and the scholar. He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Above all, he is guided by an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can come by, some kind of whole—a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, a theory of the art of writing. He never ceases, as he reads, to run up some rickety and ramshackle fabric which shall give him the temporary satisfaction of looking sufficiently like the real object to allow of affection, laughter, and argument. Hasty, inaccurate, and superficial, snatching now this poem, now that scrap of old furniture, without caring where he finds it or of what nature it may be so long as it serves his purpose and rounds his structure, his deficiencies as a critic are too obvious to be pointed out; but if he has, as Dr. Johnson maintained, some say in the final distribution of poetical honours, then, perhaps, it may be worth while to write down a few of the ideas and opinions which, insignificant in themselves, yet contribute to so mighty a result.
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