Recommended Reads

I’m going to be like the subject of Alan Bennett’s new novella and press it on everyone I meet. The Uncommon Reader — a little gem that imagines how life in England would change if its most significant personage, Queen Elizabeth II, suddenly became an avid reader — is that good.

If you’re reading this, then I’m sure you’ve heard the news by now. Reading in the U.S. is becoming something of an endangered pastime. According to a massive study published last week by the National Endowment for the Arts, Americans — particularly teens and young adults — are reading less often and understanding less of what they read.

Illustrator Shaun Tan calls his latest work, The Arrival, a picture book. I think you’ll find it’s a bit more than that.

For me, this complex and fascinating work occupies some other reading realm. Yes, it’s full of illustrations. It’s also novel length (which is why you’ll find it in the graphic novel section of most bookstores). But you won’t find a word of traditional text or dialogue.

Turns out The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4, by British author Sue Townsend, is one of the most amusing (as in laugh-out-loud, repeatedly) books I’ve read in a long while.

However, I’m straying from the task of recommending good books! Like Vladimir Nabokov’s The Defense. As I mentioned in an earlier column, it’s Nabokov and it’s chess. But I must warn you that this book has none of the feel-good plot lines that my favorite work on the subject (Walter Tevis’s The Queen’s Gambit) has.