I love to read, but I’m a pretty “common” reader: someone who takes off on great, rabid reading jags, after months of carrying around the same partially read novel.

Alan Bennett, in a short and lovely book, asks us to suppose that a very “uncommon” person has joined the ranks of readers. In her later years, Queen Elizabeth II, in the pages of The Uncommon Reader, accidentally makes contact with a mobile library (aka bookmobile). The Queen is surprised to find one  idling behind the kitchens at Buckingham Palace. Unfailingly polite, she feels she must check out a book. And so begins a funny and touching look at how reading can take you far, even to the point of nearly overpowering you.

Bennett uses this slim novella to explore how we read, what affect our reading journeys can have upon us and the people around us, and what it means to read deliberately. In the process, he presents the reader with beautifully crafted prose.

Check it out!

Any questions or comments? Just send me an email. Still to come, a look at various Willoughbys...