Läspaus

“The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. If this is agreed between us, then I feel at liberty to put forward a few ideas and suggestions because you will not allow them to fetter that independence which is the most important quality that a reader can possess. After all, what laws can be laid down about books? The battle of Waterloo was certainly fought on a certain day; but is Hamlet a better play than Lear? Nobody can say. Each must decide that question for himself. To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions-there we have none.” 
                                            från The Second Common Reader
                                                                       Virginia Woolf    

Woman Reading, 1879-84

 Susan Macdowell Eakins

Ibland undrar jag varför inte fler läsare tar till sig dessa goda råd, för nog är det så, att när en bok kommer i ropet, så hör man talas om den till leda. En gnutta fantasilöst när det finns så mycket att välja på.