The Uncommon Reader

This novella by Alan Bennett is a pleasant little fantasy about the Queen (you know, the one in England) discovering the wonders of reading. Of course she already reads, but it's all work. One day the corgis dash off and in going after them, she comes upon a mobile library parked by the kitchen door of Buckingham Palace, making its weekly rounds. Out of politeness, she inquires and then feels she should check out a book. A kitchen boy who is checking out books on his break offers some guidance for her first selection; she slogs through Ivy Compton Burnett and then devours Nancy Mitford. After that she she becomes a regular visitor... until her Secretary arranges for the mobile library to be assigned. So she sends Norman to the town library to borrow her books.  The staff, and even the Duke, get rather annoyed that the Queen seems always to have her nose stuck in a book. She still performs all her required duties, but now feels them to be more of a burden. She learns to surreptitiously read while riding in her carriage and waving at people they pass simultaneously. And instead of asking the people she meets at these various events such innocuous questions as "How far have you traveled to come here?" she starts asking what they have read recently--which intimidates people and slows down the timetable. Norman initially gets moved from the kitchen to a position as page, stationed in the hall immediately outside the queen's chambers so that he is available for consultation at any time. That is, until the Secretary disappears him to East Anglia University. The unsuspecting Queen just starts using the libraries at her various homes, expanding her repertoire to the classics. At one point she decides she wants to meet and talk with authors, but that's a bust and she concludes that meeting authors in their books is preferable to meeting them in person. Her Secretary enlists the Queen's trusted advisors to try and dissuade her from reading. When eventually she encounters Norman again at a university event, she figures out what happened and sends her Secretary back to New Zealand. At some point, because she has always been a "do-er," she decides reading is not enough and that it's time to move on to writing. But she can't do that while she's the Queen. It's a charming little fantasy that highlights many of the benefits and pitfalls of falling in love with reading. There is a lovely and glowing review of the book by the NYTimes, with more from The Guardian, Kirkus, and The Telegraph.

The End of Your Life Book Club

Although it sounds a bit grim, this is really a fascinating book about the "book club" formed by author Will Schwalbe and his mother Mary Anne in the last couple years of her life. Both were already avid readers. This is ostensibly about the power of books to change lives--no argument from me there--but is really more an homage to a remarkable woman. There were some things that really struck me about books in general, such as how physical books demand attention, whereas electronic books are essentially invisible; that is, a stack of books on your bedside or living room side table perpetually reminds you of what you intend to read. An electronic book disappears when you turn off the reader. I haven't made the leap to e-books although I gave my husband a Kindle Touch. I just added this to my reasons not to change ;-) Schwalbe also talks about the etiquette of dealing with someone who is dying--how you need to remember the past, celebrate the present and mourn the future all at the same time. How not to be intrusive or dismissive. There is, in fact, some discussion about books and what they took from their shared reading and discussion of them. The book includes a list of all the books discussed, although indexing this to the pages where the book was discussed would have been even better. A longer review from the NYT is here.

The Borrower

Rebecca Makkai is also a new author for me, but my friend Anne Z. said she was sure I would go for this book. And indeed the characters are very engaging, primarily Lucy Hull, who is filling in on a rather long-term basis as a children's librarian at the public library in Hannibal, Missouri, and her most bibliophilic patron, 10-year old Ian Drake. It turns out that Ian may be exhibiting behavior that leads a lot of people to think he is gay and his parents are so phobic and fundamentalist that they not only forbid his reading of anything to do with wizardry, adult content or evolution but they have signed him up for "Reboot Camp," run by the Reverend Bob Lawson's Glad Hearts Ministry, designed to help strays return to the (heterosexual) fold. Lucy is enraged but limits herself to surreptitiously checking out books for Ian in her own name until one fateful morning. She arrives early at the library to find Ian has spent the night, is running away, and is begging her to drive him to his grandmother's house--even though Lucy knows he does not have a grandmother. Crazily enough, she gets in the car with him and they begin driving, with her thinking at every point that she will take him home, as soon as she has inoculated him, somehow, to stand up to the anti-gay regimen to which he is being subjected. But they never manage to have that conversation and they keep driving--all the way to Vermont and the Canadian border--and it turns out that Lucy is running away as well. Is Lucy a kidnapper or the kidnappee, a savior or an intrusive busybody. Eventually Ian decides to return home. I felt a bit let down at the end. Lucy manages to sneak a list of "must read" books past Ian's mother and then goes on her way, hoping Ian will triumph and most readers will be left hoping, too. Lucy moves on to another job and reconciles herself somehow to a past and a parent she doesn't fully understand. What shines through this narrative is Lucy's faith that books can save people, and since I believe that, too, it wasn't a bad journey to take with Lucy and Ian.