|summary=Are ebooks the future of books? Is it the right time to get an ebook reader? We thought about it long and hard. Yes we did. We don't often think about things this long or this hard, because it hurts. But sometimes, cogitations are necessary. We wouldn't be here at Bookbag if we didn't love books but we knew that more and more people were enjoying ebooks. It was time to find out what it was really like to have up to 3,500 books in your pocket or your bag. 3,500! Yikes!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B002LVUWFE</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tom Campbell
|title=Fold
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Five men in Reading circulate their monthly poker evenings around their respective houses. None of them like all the others, none of them seem to completely like the game, but they're more-or-less happy with the habit. It's the way the five different personalities approach the evenings that we are concerned with, and enjoy principally, especially when the poorest player, Nick, decides to clash with his polar opposite, Doug. And what might happen if a non-playing character were to enter things, and make them even feistier?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408807602</amazonuk>
}}
|summary=When I got this book I didn't realise it was the third book in a series, and to start with this put me off; I thought I'd be the one stood outside the window watching everyone else at the party and not understand what was going on. However, as I started to read I started to feel more included than I thought I would (there is a nice little reminder paragraph at the start that filled me on what I had missed). So, although I recommend you start with the first book in the series, Entice does have its own legs and is very capable of standing on them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408810441</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ted Hughes
|title=The Iron Man
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=I first read this book many years ago at Primary school, and it hasn't lost any of its charm over the years. At times it feels like science fiction; this strange, enormous metal man who falls off a cliff, breaking into pieces and then slowly puts himself back together, his hand crawling around looking for his eye, then searching for the rest of his body piece by piece. At other times it feels like some sort of folklore fairytale, with the space-bat-angel-dragon threatening the world, and the people of the world relying on the Iron Man's bravery and intelligence in thwarting him. I love how poetic the language feels, for example as Hughes describes the Iron Man falling apart 'His great iron ears fell off and his eyes fell out. His great iron head fell off. All the separate pieces tumbled, scattered, crashing, bumping, clanging, down on to the rocky beach far below. A few rocks tumbled with him. Then silence.' The language makes it a joy to read aloud, but it also works perfectly as a story to be read alone by a confident reader.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406324671</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Shena Mackay
|title=The Atmospheric Railway: New and Selected Stories
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=This volume of short stories, first published in 2008 but new in paperback, has a lot to offer those familiar with Shena Mackay's previous work and readers coming to her stories for the first time, with a generous thirty six stories - thirteen recent stories collected in book form for the first time are combined with twenty three from Shena Mackay's previous collections.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099469677</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andy Stanton
|title=Mr Gum and the Secret Hideout
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Mr Gum is out for revenge. So often has he tried to get the best of Lamonic Bibber, the town our heroes live in, and so often he has failed. This time, however, he is well prepared. He has a secret hideout (the clue was in the title), he has Billy William the Third with him - his accomplice who's stupid and evil enough to laugh at a person getting their eyebrows burnt off, before realising said person is himself, and he has a ready-made supply of stinky, rotting meat and animal parts to help in his vengeance. Just what all this adds up to is well worth the wait in the eighth entry in this expanding series of books.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405253274</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Robin Price
|title=I Am Spartapuss
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=This is a slightly strange book. It's history, disguised as the diary of a slave-cat in Ancient Rome, and full of groanworthy puns. As I read it, I found myself unsure, at times, whether it was really very clever, or just irritatingly silly. It somehow managed to be both. The blurb on the back describes it as a 'witty Roman romp', which is exactly what it is. It's Ancient Rome - approximately - in a universe where cats rather than humans are in charge. Indeed, humans don't seem to exist at all, although other animals and some birds feature in the book. There's plenty of romping, and it's certainly witty.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954657608</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Edward Wright
|title=From Blood
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=While I'm not mad about the title, the book's cover is atmospherically good - it says to the reader 'please pick me up and read me.' So I did. The book opens in 1960s America with the Prologue. A bunch of radical thinkers are angry. They turn this pent-up anger into a well-oiled, well-ordered act of violence. Lives are lost. But the perpetrators are clever and most of them escape justice. They do what many around the world have done before them; they go underground. But several key members are still at large ...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752891774</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kate Lace
|title=A Class Act
|rating=3.5
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Tilly de Liege (that's pronounced 'de Lee', by the way) met Ainsley Driver quite by accident and they just seemed to get on with each other really well. Both were about to do A levels and were hoping to go on to university, but there was a snag. Tilly was from the wrong side of the tracks. She wasn't in the least bit worried about the fact that Ainsley lived in a council house on quite the worst estate in town but when he found out that she lived in the local manor house and went to a private school something snapped. It didn't seem to be about money – as the de Lieges really didn't have any - more about the fact that she hadn't said.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755347943</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Robert Leon Davis
|title=Running Scared: For 22 Years He Was a Fugitive - The Corrupt Cop Busted by God
|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Robert Davis was the eldest of nine children all living with their grandmother in New Orleans – on welfare. His grandmother was a good, honest woman and Davis loved and respected her, but money was so tight that he resorted to thieving to bring some extra food in for the family. He knew that she would be deeply upset about it, but hunger is hunger. In your heart you can't blame him and it seems that all is coming good when Davis becomes a respected police officer in the mid nineteen-seventies. He's living with a good, decent woman and looks set to have a good career. Great, you think, sometimes life ''is'' fair and it works out.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854249932</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sarah Monk
|title=Taking the Lead
|rating=4
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary=Theodora English had left her home in London to move to a tiny Cornish village with her boyfriend Michael, only for him to dump her soon afterwards. You'd expect her to head straight back to London, but you'd be wrong. She buys the cottage next door, moves in and starts getting to know the locals.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755345142</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Lindsley
|title=The Darkfall Switch
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The book opens on a sultry, hot summer's day in central London. Imagine the stifling heat is the subliminal message here, especially for those passengers on the underground - ' ... as if they were all joined in some macabre dance as the train rattled along the tunnel. Everybody pressed against others.' Suddenly there's a problem with the infrastructure. A big problem. As the experts frantically work behind the scenes to get London moving again - the unthinkable happens. People lose their lives in what appears to be a power cut.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>070909146X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alan Lorber
|title=Benny Allen Was A Star: A New York Music Story
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Alan Lorber has written a fictional and I suspect a semi autobiographical account of his years as a top music arranger in the 1950's and early 1960's, a period of huge change in the music industry culminating with the breakthrough of the Beatles in America. Rather than simply writing a factual narrative of his involvement during this period he decided to tell the story of the fictional Benny Allen, a classically trained musician who almost by accident gets involved in the music publishing business and then goes on to produce some hugely successful orchestrations on many of the top hit records of the time.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B0041VXCTA</amazonuk>
}}
