The Uncommonn Reader

What a charmer, what a delight, what a fantastically wonderful and clever little story this is! The Uncommon Reader is of course the Queen and she becomes ADDICTED to the written word to the chagrin of all around her. But that is just the barest outline, what is so compelling is the wit with which this fable is written.

Imagine if you will the equerries fixing the crowd so we can be through by lunch, pre-populating the crowd with the answers to the usual dopey questions so they don't have a fit of "omigod it's the QUEEN", teaching small talk on the fly. But then the Queen stops asking where they're from and how long was the drive and asks -- egads -- what they are READING!! Stunned, flummoxed, caught for words they croak uh ma'am, I'm from Brighton.

Well, something like that.

There is a lovely scene where the Queen decides to honour these authors she has come to admire so much and learns the lesson we all do. But for a meagre handful, when it comes to authors it is all in the book. A more dull or self-ref-and-reverential crowd you are unlikely to meet. Back when I was in book retail we used to want to seduce our customers by holding "Author Events" which were readings at their worst (seriously, unless you are in your jammies and about to go to bed do you want someone to read aloud? their own stuff?) or brief (sweet brevity) chats about the inspiration behind the book. The one exception was Martin Amis and if you ever have the chance to hear him speak about anything, go. Another exception was the youngest daughter of Charles Lindbergh whose name escapes me, who wrote some kind of memoir. Could have been interesting, given that the most famous Lindbergh child and the only one anyone can readily bring to mind is a dead baby. She told the story of taking her own son to see a Lindbergh museum, where the Spirit of St. Louis was housed. The museum keepers had a cherry picker there so that she and her son could rise from the ground and see the famous airplane up close. She reached her hand and touched the cockpit and said to her boy, "Isn't this amazing?" and he said "Yeah!!! For sure!!! I've never been in a cherry picker before!!!!" The book bombed but the event was nice.

The Queen's author event was not this successful.

The Uncomon Reader is, sadly, a short book but please, please, read it. It will make your day.