Utterly Charming

While traipsing back and forth from the Children's Room to the Teen area (seems I'm doing a lot of that since kids are used to coming to us about summer reading and, if they look a bit tall, need to be redirected) today, I stopped to peruse the new book rack (as if I don't have 3 unfinished ones at home). A book whose title failed to interest me had an author who did. It's The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett [pictured is our large print edition]. Bennett is a favorite of mine from the "Beyond the Fringe" group. I've also read his The Clothes They Stood Up In and The Lady in the Van.
The book is about a familiar topic: reading, but with an unfamiliar protagonist, The Queen of England.
"Charming" is not an adjective I bandy about, less so as an unironic adjective. Someone is charming when I cannot bring myself to call them an Arschloch. I can think of no other descriptive for this book which has utterly charmed me. It was a gentle read that I could finish in the doctor's waiting room this afternoon (it takes time to do the bloodwork) and hand off to Bren who had read about it. I started reading it with a smile playing about my lips. I wondered as I read, though, what is the point of writing a book about reading when readers will read it anyway and non-readers never will and it won't help them. I'm listening to the audiobook of The Book Thief right now (and can't wait until it's over because the relentless suspense and horror of Nazi Germany is the source of nightmares for me and a certain amount of residual familial guilt since we still have family in the Fatherland), which is also nominally about reading and its importance to Liesel. It can sneak that message past the teen reader who's insatiable thirst for sensation pulls him through the plotline. But this book is about reading on the surface, while slyly commenting on politics, the monarchy, and some other things too subtle for me to parse.
My initial smile widened. I was chuckling a bit here and there eventually. Finally, I gasped.
Hey, it's not long, the letters are really big, and it's amusing. Give it a try.