I found a book in a charity shop this week. I read a page or two and immediately added it to my pile.

I read it that day. All in one go. Too funny for words.

I’ve been reading various books from the library this summer, not from my Library. Not one of them has grabbed me so I couldn’t put the book down, or that I kept picking it back up every spare moment that I had.

Not because they were all awful books, either. Some were, but not all.

Not because they were Deep or Heavy books. Some were really quite light-hearted. One is a Terry Pratchett (I’m still reading that one, and if I can get through several of my library books, I can definitely return to that one; Jingo, if you’re interested). Even V.E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic, which I quite liked and whose writing style I enjoyed, hasn’t made me rush out to find the second of the trilogy or another of her novels.

To be fair, this book was far from being a novel. It’s a novella at best, and probably actually just a long short story, being about 122 pages long. Easy to read in one sitting, even with two Tinies demanding attention.

It is The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett, and it’s about Queen Elizabeth II suddenly discovering Books and Reading, and becoming so obsessed it threatens her carrying out her duties.

And I really can’t recommend it highly enough. As I said before, too funny for words. Not a word wasted. One wonders what Her Majesty might have made of it (I feel sure someone would have drawn her attention to it when it was first published in the London Review of Books).

It also makes a change to have read a book I really thoroughly enjoyed, because more than one of my summer reading books has been…shall we say…a disappointment…? So much so, that it was part of the reason for taking the summer off. That, and I think I’ve decided that I simply don’t work in the summer. Especially not when it’s as hot as the one we’ve just had.