Well that's definitely a case of "you get what you pay for"...
I do like the touch of remembering literacy is script-specific tho, something far too many people forget despite daily reading translated stuff originally written in moonrune squiggles.
I bet he could have hired someone to teach him to read with the money the fancy grand library charged for an official reader. Assuming the country doesn't use an ultra inefficient writing system that requires decades to learn.