Helen Castor, She Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth

First book read under lockdown. The gym has shut so my normal time reading while on the bike has stopped. As my ankle is still painful following the Surrey Half, I cannot run either. We are all allowed out once a day for exercise, so I am walking a 5 mile circuit each morning. Great for catching up on podcasts, but no good for reading. So have been reading She Wolves as and when I can, so haven't really been absorbed by it.

Seishi Yokomizo, The Honjin Murders

A vintage Japanese locked-room mystery, translated into English for the first time. It was funny to read something so familiar but in an unfamiliar setting. It reminded me of nothing so much as an episode of Jonathan Creek, with an incredibly convoluted and complicated mechanism and set up. The suspension of disbelief and elaborate staging required is entirely unbelievable, but still very enjoyable. I guess the skill of the greatest like Agatha Christie lies in making an artificial unbelievable scenario seem credible.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Richard Ayoade, Ayoade On Top

I was reading Anna Karenina when TMATL was released, so I had to put it on hold for a few days. Reading two such heavy books appears to have brought on mild RSI in my left forearm. Need to stretch more. It's bad enough getting injured running, getting injured reading is silly. I really enjoyed Anna Karenina, but I am going to sound a bit chippy when describing it. It is essentially a posh soap opera, where you are invested in the characters and their story arcs. The more of the 'essential novels' I read, the more a common thread is emerging (not always there, but often). The books are about wealthy, privileged people who don't have any real problems and so invent some for themselves. The jeopardy comes from their fear of falling from their elevated position in society to a less elevated position. Still far more privileged than the majority of the population, but there you are. I'm not sure if this is because of the demographic of 'great' authors, who by definition are in the well-off, well-educated section of society, the demands of their market, as most readers will also be from the same demographic, or aspire to be in that demographic, whether the lives of the privileged genuinely ARE more interesting or whether that is just the perception. 'Ayoade on Top' was an indulgence for the very funny Richard Ayoade, but was essentially one joke - that the formulaic Gwyneth Paltrow movie 'View From The Top' is a triumph of cinema. The joke quickly wears thin unfortunately. In the meantime, If I looked up from whichever book I'm reading, I would notice the country shutting down slowly as a far-to-late half-arsed response to the spread of Coronavirus. At the moment schools are still open, but people are panic-buying and hoarding. Let's see what occurs.

Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & The Light

Read out of turn on the day of release, and the highlight of my year so far. I took 2 days off work to read it, was waiting at Waterstones in Woking for the shutters to go up to get my hands on it, and then spent the next 48 hours in various restaurants, coffee shops, pubs, exercise bikes and comfy chairs reading the last part of this incredible trilogy. Cromwell's life-long balancing act came crashing down after 1 misstep (maybe 2 - failure to engineer a divorce from Anne of Cleves and to assassinate the pretender Reginald Pole).