The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives (2010): Lola Shoneyin

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★★★

I picked this out at the library as part of my plan to read more fiction set in other cultures, and it was certainly illuminating, though I’m not able to judge how far (if at all) it’s exaggerated in regard to the characters’ beliefs, habits and interactions. Set in contemporary Nigeria, it follows the educated young woman Bolanle as she joins the prosperous household of Baba Segi as his fourth wife. Her arrival worsens the already fraught relationships between his existing wives and, ultimately, will destroy the very foundations of this uncomfortable ménage.

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Guards! Guards! (1989): Terry Pratchett

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★★★★

The Discworld Reread: Book VIII

In the series so far, we haven’t seen much of the Ankh-Morpork City Guard. One or two guardsmen have had speaking roles, but essentially they’ve occupied the place that such figures occupy in traditional fantasy: bland figures, so expendable that they don’t even have names, whose function is to fight, pursue or be killed by the maverick hero. This novel goes a long way towards rectifying that, as the estimable men of the Night Watch have their moment in the sun (so to speak) at last – introducing some of my favourite characters along the way.

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Académie Royale (2015): Hannah Williams

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★★★★½

A History in Portraits

Published in 2015, this lavishly-illustrated book offers a engaging study of the Académie Royale, from its foundation in 1648 until its abolition in 1793 as part of the intellectual readjustments of the Revolution. While the Académie’s meetings and statutes are well-documented and have furnished much research over the years, Williams seeks to go beyond a simple chronological history of a great institution. Instead, she interrogates the Académie’s values and networks by reconstructing the lived experience of its members, as far as possible, through an examination of the Académie’s collection of official artists’ portraits. It’s an ambitious idea, but the book pulls it off remarkably well and is all the more appealing for its spirited accounts of machinations, alliances and rivalries in the corridors of the Louvre in the 17th and 18th centuries.

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Pyramids (1989): Terry Pratchett

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★★★★

The Discworld Reread: Book VII

The Old Kingdom of the Djel river valley has endured for millennia, governed by ancient rituals and overshadowed by its pyramids, the mighty tombs of former monarchs, which flare their power up into the night. It isn’t a place that accepts change easily. And yet, in a small act of defiance, King Teppicymon XXVII decides to send his son away to school. He’s heard that the Assassins’ Guild in Ankh-Morpork offers a fine modern education, and so young Teppic is bundled off for an improving course of etiquette, history, foreign languages and rudimentary chemistry. Oh, and learning how to ‘inhume’ people as well, of course, but it’s considered a bit vulgar to talk about that. The problem comes, however, when the King shuffles off this mortal coil mere hours after his son’s graduation exam, and Teppic is suddenly forced to confront a burning question: how on earth does one reconcile being a thoroughly modern assassin and a living god?

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The Good People (2016): Hannah Kent

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★★★★

A couple of years ago, everyone was talking about Hannah Kent’s debut novel, Burial Rites. I remember reading about it on Helen’s blog and thought it sounded intriguing; but although it’s made its way onto my TBR pile I still haven’t got round to reading it. It did, however, mean that I immediately noticed her new novel, The Good People, of which I was granted a review copy. Like Burial Rites, this story is based on historical fact and, although I wasn’t sure what to expect from Kent’s writing, I’ve been deeply impressed by her superb evocation of time and place. Funnily enough, The Good People deals with very similar themes to those of Alison Littlewood’s The Hidden People, which I read last year, so beautifully told that at times one almost forgets the horrific story at its heart.

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Pachinko (2017): Min Jin Lee

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★★★★

One of my plans for this year is to read books that take me beyond my comfort zone of European history and settings, whether that’s fiction based in other parts of the world, fantasy influenced by other cultures, or travel books and memoirs. I’m especially keen to learn more about Asia, thanks to my recent travels. Pachinko, which came up for review just before Christmas, is a good place to start. An ambitious historical novel, embracing almost the entire 20th century, it follows five generations of a hard-working Korean family and their efforts to earn security in their adopted country of Japan.

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The Unseeing (2016): Anna Mazzola

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★★★

Edmund Fleetwood has an unfortunate handicap for a man who wants to make his name as a criminal lawyer. He has principles. When the Home Secretary asks him to review the Edgeware Road murder case, in which a woman is liable to hang for concealing a murder, Edmund finds himself becoming deeply emotionally involved in what he believes to be a fundamental miscarriage of justice. Based on a real murder committed in 1836, Anna Mazzola’s debut novel sets the facts of the case within a tantalising web of secrets.

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The Course of Love (2016): Alain de Botton

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★★★★

Rahib and Kirsten meet in Edinburgh: they go on a few dates, sleep together, meet each other’s parents and enjoy the dizzying wonder of opening their soul to another human being. Rahib proposes; Kirsten accepts; they marry. And that’s where most fictions end: with wedding bells and the start of a new life together, implicitly full of happiness. But Alain De Botton’s thoughtful, wise novel asks a searching question. What if love is not the breathless romantic longing that brings about a marriage, but the hard graft that succeeds it? What if that story, of struggle, compromise, arguments, reconciliation, loneliness, determination and occasional fury was the one really worth reading?

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A Companion to Wolves (2007): Sarah Monette & Elizabeth Bear

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★★★

The Iskryne Saga: Book I

Ever since our joint reading of King Hereafter, Heloise and I have been keen to read another book together. We settled on this for several reasons, none of which had anything to do with the cover, I hasten to add. First, Heloise is a great admirer of both authors. Second, I loved The Goblin Emperor, cautiously enjoyed the Doctrine of Labyrinths sequence, and was keen to explore more of Monette’s fantasy worlds. Third, but by no means least, The Iskryne Saga focuses on a fantasy culture rich with Viking and Anglo-Saxon influences, and I was intrigued.

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Much Ado About Nothing (1598/99): William Shakespeare

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Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing

★★★★

Or, Love’s Labour’s Won

(Royal Shakespeare Company, Haymarket Theatre, until 18 March 2017)

Several documents refer to a Shakespeare play called Love’s Labour’s Won, but there’s no sign of it in the First Folio and scholars have, increasingly, come to think that it might just have been renamed. The RSC make the playful but persuasive case that it may have been the play now known as Much Ado About Nothing (i.e. ‘Love’s Labour’s Won, or, Much Ado About Nothing‘). In the second part of their London-season duology, the cast and crew of the RSC take us back to the sumptuous country house we saw in Love’s Labour’s Lost. Then it was summer, the last summer, before war broke out and the young men marched away. But now it’s Christmastime: the Armistice has been signed and the soldiers have come home. The battles are no longer those of bayonets and machine-guns in the mud but, instead, the glittering flash and fire of wordplay.

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