(Used to be) Springwood Colquhouns: The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

Saturday, January 19, 2008

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

This is a delightful little book that celebrates the pleasures of reading.
Chasing the errant corgis one day, the Queen stumbles upon a mobile library. She goes into the van to apologise for the fuss caused by the dogs and having done so, she feels duty bound to borrow a book. Though the book she borrows isn't very good, her upbringing binds her to finish it and when she returns it to the library next week takes another book so as not to appear rude. This second book is a much better choice and awakens a passion for reading in the Queen.
Aided by Norman, a young man from the palace kitchen who frequents the library, the Queen’s undergoes quite a transformation as she discovers the liberating pleasures of the written word. She becomes so consumed by her reading that her usual meticulous attention to her public duties suffer and her staff do their best to put her off and distract her.
"I htink of literature", she wrote, "as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but cannot possibly reach. And I have started too late. I will never catch up."

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"QUOTE UNQUOTE"

‘The book can produce an addiction as fierce as heroin or nicotine, forcing us to spend much of our lives, like junkies, in book shops and libraries, those literary counterparts to the opium den’ - Phillip Adams.
Starting a novel is like opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing - Iris Murdoch, Under the Net 1954
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it - JD Salinger
I have sometimes dreamt that when the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards – their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble – the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.” – Virginia Woolf from The Common Reader
A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life - Norman Cousins – US editor (1915-1990)
Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it – PJ O’Rourke
With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - nut no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how. - Doris Lessing, author.
Imagine that no-one had encouraged you to understand those funny little squiggles on the page called words that can make you gasp or can make you cry. You'd be a smaller person living in a smaller world - Home Page of the Reading Agency
I don't believe that libraries should be drab places where people sit in silence, and that's been the main reason for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians. - Graham Chapman from Episode 10 of Monty Python's Flying Circus, 1970
Th' first thing to have in a libry is a shelf. Fr'm time to time this can be decorated with lithrachure. But th's shelf is th' main thing. - Finley Peter Dunne, "Books" Mr Dooley SaysYou see
There are two types of books in libraries: Catherine Cooksons and non-Catherine Cooksons. The non-Catherine Cooksons are big books on Britain's Railways from the Air for men to browse through while their wives choose a Cookson. - Guy Browning, The Guardian, 2003
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. — Groucho MARX