Read: "Uncommon Reader" by Alan Bennett

Read: "Uncommon Reader" by Alan Bennett, 2007, 9780374280963.

Decent but slow in the middle. The Queen follows her Corgi’s off the Palace grounds to a bookmobile. She goes aboard to apologize for all the barking and feels obligated to check out a book. She does not enjoy the novel but finishes it out of duty and next week, to end a meeting with her private secretary, she returns the book herself and gets a much better book. I book she enjoys enough to stay in bed and finish.

The Queen starts reading everything and anything and promotes a kitchen aid she met on that first bookmobile trip to be her assistant for literature. Her reading habits become a concern for her staff when she has more interest in reading than performing official duties. The novels and history she reads teach her to understand and empathize with people much more than she had ever been able as Queen. There is quite a bit of boring introspection in the middle of the book until the Queen starts considering whether she should start writing. The Queen thinks of writing as a progression forward from all the reading she has done.

In the end the Queen invites all the privy council for a tea and after announcing her intention to write a book abdicates on the novella's last sentence.

Bennett uses lots of commas. Lots, and lots, and lots, of commas.