V

"Every season is likeable, and wet days and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude. Even sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and the most common actions—a walk, a talk, solitude in one’s own orchard—can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind. Beauty is everywhere, and beauty is only two finger’s-breadth from goodness. So, in the name of health and sanity, let us not dwell on the end of the journey."

~Virginia Woolf

The Common Reader “Montaigne”-Ch. 6

The Common Reader is Woolf’s first and most popular volume of essays; the collection has more than twenty-five selections.

Today's question: Are you the "common reader"? Who is the common reader you ask? Well, according to Dr. Johnson, this individual is neither a critic nor a scholar. He reads for his own pleasure and (to quote Mrs. Woolf) "He is guided by an instinct to create for himself out of whatever odds or 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." It's someone untarnished by the literary world. Someone who reads what they want because they want to, not because they were told to. Someone who reads to fulfill some part of themselves through word soaked pages; opposed to reading only to announce some freshly captured nugget of knowledge or produce a counterargument to others opinions...

Isn't the common reader who writers fill their pages for?

Side Notes: (1) I'm hoping to visit some of V. Woolf's stomping grounds in London; and (2) I think it would be really neat to have a name that starts with a "V" only because the nickname "V" seems mysterious and has a kind of I-don't-take-crap-from-people ring to it.