> Setting, the residence of Queen Elizabeth of England\
>Characters: 1) Queen Elizabeth 2) Norman, young boy in kitchen whom the Queen meets in the mobile library behind the palace while chasing her corgis
> p.6....It was a hobby and it was in the nature of her job that she didn't have hobbies.....Hobbies involved preferences; and preferences had to be avoided...."
> p.21...."...but briefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting."
> p.30..."All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic."
> p.31..."As a girl, one of her greatest thrills had been on VE night when she and her sister had slipped out of the gates and mingled unrecognised with the crowds. There was something of that, she felt, to reading. It was anonymous; it was shared; it was common."
> her corgis "hated her books"....Bella nudges mine out of my hand occasionally when she wants my attention
> Vocab: 1) invigilate: to keep watch; especially British : to supervise students at an examination 2) opsimath: one who learns only late in life
> p.47..."I think of literature...as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but will never reach."
> p.49..."Am I alone....in wanting to give Henry James a good talking-to?"....love that line
> p.52..."Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met with in the pages of their novels, and as much creatures of the reader's imagination as the characters in their books
> p.72..."One recipe for happiness is to have no sense of entitlement."
> p.101....You don't put your life into your books. You find it there."
> p.110..."At eighty things do no occur; they recur."
> p.115..." 'I would have thought,' said the prime minister, 'that Your Majesty was above literature.' 'Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity."
> p.116..."Sometimes one has felt like a scented candle, sent in to perfume a regime or aerate a policy, monarchy these days just a government-issue deodorant."
> p.120..." 'Yes, ma'am, I agree, but the difference, surely, is that His Royal Highness wrote the book as Duke of Windsor. He could only write it because he had abdicated.' 'Oh, did I not say that?' said the Queen. 'But...why do you think you're all here?"...Great closing line!
> LibraryThing Review: This is my first Alan Bennett experience....what a novel concept! The Queen discovers reading for pleasure as an elderly woman and causes much disruption to routine and becomes the subject of manipulation and deceit in order to restore order. At every turn, she seems naively distressed at the concern over her new hobby. Bennett is creative, witty, and lets the reader have some fun while injecting some insight into royal life, lest one judge a book by its cover.
P.S. - I was appalled to hear that her corgis are so universally disliked!
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