The Uncommon Reader

The Queen (yes, that's the Queen of England) unexpectedly drops into a bookmobile and unexpectedly develops a love, a passion for reading.

That's the whole plot behind this tiny novel.

And does she ever become a better person. She found, as she read more and more, that she could put herself into the place of someone else, that she could understand the feelings of others. “'At the risk of sounding like a piece of steak,' she said, ‘they tenderize one.'”

She grows to loath her other duties. Her meetings with the Prime Minister are tedious. She finds reading the opposite of briefings, she tells him. “Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.”

But no one likes her reading. Reading made others uneasy. A conversation between the Queen and her private secretary:

“'I feel, ma'am, that while not exactly elitist it sends the wrong message. It tends to exclude.'

‘Exclude? Surely most people can read?'

‘They can read, ma'am, but I'm not sure that they do.'”

In the end, the Queen turns to writing, but books have had their say.

A fun little story for those of us who love books.