About Us

From TheBookbag

Firstly, and most importantly, we would like you to think of The Bookbag as a homely, comfortable place. The corner of your local library perhaps, where you can relax in convivial company and find some suggestions for books to read. We don't have an 'angle'. We're not looking to force feed you the latest books on the shelves. We're not tied to a particular genre. We're not interested in what's fashionable. We just want to share our thoughts with you, if you'd like us to.

You'll find that many of the books on the site have positive reviews. At Bookbag, we read for pleasure. We're far too long in the tooth to get any pleasure from reading a book with the sole purpose of printing knocking copy. We place our books with reviewers we think will enjoy them and who will be able to assess them for what they are, not what they would like them to be. If word on the publishing street leads us to expect a book to be good and we are disappointed by it, we will tell you. If a usually reliable author lets us down, we will tell you. If there are better books of its kind around, we will tell you. But we won't criticise the latest chick-lit hit for not being a Booker candidate. By and large, this is a site that wants to help you find books you will enjoy reading and not one that reserves a corner of the internet for literary spite.

We hope the site is easy on the eye and, most importantly, easy to use. If you think it isn't, or you have a suggestion to make please tell us.

And who are we? Well, The Bookbag was the brainchild of Jill Murphy and Sue Magee, friends who have never met other than over the internet but who share a passion for good books. We'd like to share that passion with you. The website has been designed by us, but we owe a tremendous debt to our friend and technical consultant, Keith, without whom none of this would have been possible.

• Sue Magee lives in Yorkshire. She loves good food, good wine, good books and her dogs; two delicious Rhodesian Ridgebacks.

• Jill Murphy lives in Devon. She loves good food, good wine, good books and her children; two delicious little boys.

• Keith isn't saying.

• Conor Murphy is eleven and has some very clear ideas about what he likes to read. We think he's rather special.

• Magda Healey has graciously agreed to share her towering intellect with us here at Bookbag. We are forever in her debt. Magda lives in the wilds of bonny Scotland with her husband and children and has a view on everything. Magda wants us to warn you that she's Polish and as the Poles have no articles in their language she asks to be forgiven for the odd misplaced 'a' or 'the'.

• Dave Martin lives on the outskirts of Liverpool in what can he calls, "a posh council house full of kids, animals and my dear wife Jo". Dave is the straight-talking type which means he is not always eloquent but does get to the point. He has a passion for fantasy novelists and he will happily spend hours telling people that they simply must read the latest Terry Pratchett or Stephen King novel...much to their annoyance!

• Sue Fairhead spent most of her life in Birmingham, UK, but for the past nine years has lived in Cyprus with her husband, two teenage sons whom she educated at home, and four cats. She loves good food and good books, is frequently long-winded, sometimes eloquent, and rarely gets to the point. [Sue said that - we didn't!]

• Paul Harrop is a southerner exiled in Yorkshire. He loves a good whine and claims to have been a grumpy old man before the term was invented. Paul inflicts his curmudgeonliness on his wife, daughter and anyone else who gets in his way.

• Sarah Cooper lives in S. Wales. She is married to Justin and has a lovely little boy called Corey. She is a self-confessed craft addict and feels it is the ultimate wonder to feast your eyes on a creation you have made. She has a love of craft and cookery books and says that she is soon going to have to buy a new house just to house all her books. She is going to share with us her opinions on the latest books.

• Zoë Page went round the world a few times but somehow still ended up back where she started from in Manchester. Her home has no husband, children or pets, but it does contain lots and lots of books. Zoë likes linguistics and foreign languages. She despairs of errant apostrophes and split infinitives, but thinks a preposition is still ok to end a sentence with.

• Claire Storey is a former Essex girly turned Home Counties but she maintains that she's true to her roots (minus the accent!). Married to Andrew she gave up her job as a city lawyer on the birth of her son. She too loves good food and wine and will read anything with words on, even a ketchup bottle!

• Kerry King is a former Home Counties girl turned Essex – not that she has started wearing white stilettos and dancing around her handbag, but that she now lives in leafy Theydon Bois in the heart of Epping Forest with her husband, Tim. Kerry adores her two British Shorthair cats, Toby and Bluebelle, she enjoys cooking for friends, Harry Potter, sharing a good bottle of Merlot and most of all to dip in and out of an eclectic array of books at every available opportunity.

• Lesley Mason never planned on growing up. Her passions are travel and the written word. One day she'll sort out the diet, get fit and do up the house. In the meantime, there’s a planet to explore and books to be read.

• John Lloyd is a transplant of Sussex blood into Leicester, to continue the geographical theme of the above. He's far too self-deprecating,though, and unable to say much more. Trained as an actor, he's been the second man in a one man show for the last three years. One of these days he might get around to looking up the meaning of self-deprecating, just in case he's got it wrong.

• Jacqueline Kay has lived over half her life in Buckinghamshire despite her more Northern roots. She likes her reading both to inform and entertain, but above all, to cause her to think. She writes with those same motives in mind.

• Iain Wear is a Kentishman by birth who has recently escaped London for a more sedate pace of life in Swindon, Wiltshire. He started to read at a young age and has barely stopped since. His home has more bookshelves than it has residents, which seems to him to be a more than acceptable way to live. Unlike much of the population, he enjoys travelling by public transport, as reading and driving just isn't safe.

If you enjoy reading books and you think you've got what it takes to be a book reviewer, why not consider joining our team? Check out the Reviewer Vacancies page.