Difference between revisions of "Book Reviews From The Bookbag"
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| + | |title=Always There | ||
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| + | |summary=When Dave left Plymouth to go to college in Uxbridge he met Lisa. They sort of palled around together for a little while with no thought of anything more, well, not on Dave's part at least. The he met Jo and for a long time they were really good friends and it would be a couple of years before they were anything more. Lisa didn't see it that way though: she reckoned that if Jo hadn't come along she and Dave would have stuck together and made a go of it. Dave and Jo's couple of years at college were marked, if not marred, by Lisa's regular outbursts. | ||
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|summary=''No US President has ever died in May.'' ''There are fewer women on corporate boards in America than there are men named John.'' ''Dogs investigate bad smells with their right nostril and good smells with their left.'' ''Apollo 11's fuel consumption was seven inches to the gallon.'' ''The first occupational disease ever recorded in medical literature was 'chimney sweep's scrotum'.'' ''The song 'Yes, We Have No Bananas' was written by Leon Trotsky's nephew.'' ''In the 18th Century, King George I declared all pigeon droppings to be property of the Crown''. I hardly think I need say any more. Review over. | |summary=''No US President has ever died in May.'' ''There are fewer women on corporate boards in America than there are men named John.'' ''Dogs investigate bad smells with their right nostril and good smells with their left.'' ''Apollo 11's fuel consumption was seven inches to the gallon.'' ''The first occupational disease ever recorded in medical literature was 'chimney sweep's scrotum'.'' ''The song 'Yes, We Have No Bananas' was written by Leon Trotsky's nephew.'' ''In the 18th Century, King George I declared all pigeon droppings to be property of the Crown''. I hardly think I need say any more. Review over. | ||
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Revision as of 12:18, 15 November 2015
The Bookbag
Hello from The Bookbag, a book review site, featuring books from all the many walks of literary life - fiction, biography, crime, cookery and anything else that takes our fancy. At Bookbag Towers the bookbag sits at the side of the desk. It's the bag we take to the library and the bookshop. Sometimes it holds the latest releases, but at other times there'll be old favourites, books for the children, books for the home. They're sometimes our own books or books from the local library. They're often books sent to us by publishers and we promise to tell you exactly what we think about them. You might not want to read through a full review, so we'll give you a quick review which summarises what we felt about the book and tells you whether or not we think you should buy or borrow it. There are also lots of author interviews, and all sorts of top tens - all of which you can find on our features page. If you're stuck for something to read, check out the recommendations page.
There are currently 16,114 reviews at TheBookbag.
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Always There by John Van der Kiste
When Dave left Plymouth to go to college in Uxbridge he met Lisa. They sort of palled around together for a little while with no thought of anything more, well, not on Dave's part at least. The he met Jo and for a long time they were really good friends and it would be a couple of years before they were anything more. Lisa didn't see it that way though: she reckoned that if Jo hadn't come along she and Dave would have stuck together and made a go of it. Dave and Jo's couple of years at college were marked, if not marred, by Lisa's regular outbursts. Full review...
The King is Dead by Suzannah Lipscomb
Shortly before his death in January 1547, King Henry VIII's last will and testament was read, stamped and sealed. It has remained one of the most intriguing and contested documents in British history. This book examines it from every angle, and analyses the background against the last days of the King's life and the events which followed. Full review...
When Mr Putin Stole My Painting: Ten Short Stories by Joannah Yacoub
Put yourself, if necessary, in the mind of someone wanting to publish their first collection of short stories. What do you choose as the contents – besides just saying the best available? Do you try and find a theme, or connecting happenstance or style, to pin them together? Are they based on you now, someone else somewhen else, or all the diverse people and places you have once met? Joannah Yacoub seems to have gone for the latter. Full review...
The First Wife by Erica Spindler
I should have guessed from their names (Bailey and Logan) that this story was set in the States, but initially I was too busy identifying with the blurb on the back to notice. 10 year age gap? Check. Magnificent estate? Check. First wife? Check. Even if that doesn't make you feel as if you are reading about your own life, which is of course how it made me feel, there's a lot to drag you in to this one immediately and I was utterly delighted that my initial eagerness to read this one was sustained to the very last page. Full review...
The Grownup by Gillian Flynn
Our narrator, a self-confessed expert at giving, er, relief to men, is branching out. Well, carpal tunnel syndrome at such a young age isn't great. Instead of working at the back of a dodgy tarot shop, she's out front, pretending to see auras, and using her natural aptitude to read people (a skill mastered begging for years with her one-eyed mother), when a woman comes in with a serious demand. Piecing the mystery of what it might be together for us, our heroine ends up in a very malevolent building, housing what might be the step-son from hell… Full review...
On Purpose: Delivering a Branded Customer Experience People Love by Shaun Smith and Andy Milligan
This is a book about business things – branding, specifically. How to communicate your purpose to customers through an identifiable marketing strategy. How to ensure your company portrays the image you want and how to get your staff, and customers, to buy into it. Full review...
Clangers: The Brilliant Surprise by Daniel Postgate
There is no such thing as nostalgia anymore as all the classic children's TV shows of the past have been pulled out of retirement, dusted off and made anew. The Clangers are one of the latest IPs to be visited by the resurrectionists and the new show has proved very popular. It has now spawned spin off toys and books, but how do you write a book about a bunch of creatures that we cannot understand? Full review...
Game of Mirrors by Andrea Camilleri
Inspector Montalbano came to the aid of his new neighbour when her car wouldn't start. It wasn't just gallantry which led him to do this: the fact that she was stunningly beautiful didn't harm her chances at all. Montalbano wasn't to know where this simple, courteous act would lead, although he knew something was wrong: it wasn't that the car wouldn't start - it had been deliberately damaged. Her husband, a computer salesman, seemed only to be around occasionally and obviously didn't care what Liliana got up to when he wasn't there. And then Liliana began making advances to Montalbano, whilst she was carrying on a relationship with a young assistant in a local clothes shop. What was going on? Full review...
Dragon's Flight by Dr Kris J Sime
Simon and Alice have spent the school term living with their aunt, a kindly, if somewhat vague, person. Simon's father describes Aunt Maggie as bohemian and hippy. Simon is quite dismissive of the flowing clothes and collections of gemstones and discussions of auras that being bohemian and hippy entails, but both he and Alice can agree that Aunt Maggie is a nice person. Full review...
Hilda and the Troll by Luke Pearson
Hilda, a rather delightful small, blue-haired girl, is never far from an adventure. She is confident and excitable, brave and creative, and her stories are slightly mad, and very, very readable! Full review...
The Jar of Happiness by Ailsa Burrows
What would you do if you knew the recipe for happiness? I'm sure you could make a fortune, selling it by the jar, though it's questionable of course as to whether such profiteering from the sale of emotions would make you happy! Meg, the little girl in this story, makes up her own special blend of happiness in a jar, and she takes it everywhere, using it to cheer up her friends and family. But what will happen when Meg can't find the jar? Full review...
The Soldier's Wife by Pamela Hart
...none of it was real, until the last moment when his hand, the tips of his fingers, left the tips of hers and he was gone.
Turned into just another soldier.
Ruby and Jimmy are newly-weds full of big dreams and plans for the future, but all of that will have to wait. It is 1915 and the world is in the grip Great War, sweeping Jimmy away to fight battles in far-off Gallipoli. Ruby feels like she's in limbo; no longer an innocent child but not quite a fully-fledged married lady. Not wanting to return home, she decides to stay in Sydney, to keep herself occupied as she waits out the war, longing for the return of her beloved husband. She rents a room from a local landlady and finds a job as a bookkeeper at a Timber Merchant. Although she initially takes the job to keep herself occupied and earn a little money, she soon falls into a comfortable routine and starts to enjoy her new-found independence and responsibility. Full review...
Boy 23 by Jim Carrington
Boy 23 isn't in My Place any more. He can't see The Screen, he can't hear The Voice. Boy 23 is alone.
Before being dumped alone in the forest by The Voice, Boy 23 - or Jesper, as we shall call him - has lived in a room entirely by himself. He has never met another human being or been outside. His only experience of the world has been through a few short video clips, shown to him on his Screen by The Voice in My Place. Now, he finds himself alone with only a bag full of survival equipment and some brief words from The Voice: his life is in danger, people have been sent to kill him, he must head north west to the Low Countries, The Voice will meet him there and explain everything. Full review...
Sherlock: The Essential Arthur Conan Doyle Adventures by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
There can be few people who haven't heard of Sherlock Holmes, whether in the guise of the original stories or subsequent film and television adaptations including the most recent series starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, who are pictured on the dust cover of Sherlock: The Essential Arthur Conan Doyle Adventures. It's this most recent series which has widened the fan base of the stories and many of them won't have copies of the original stories to hand. My own copy is a 1959 reprint of the 1929 edition which had four stories in one volume, but this current volume has nineteen stories in the one book. Full review...
Old School (Diary of a Wimpy Kid book 10) by Jeff Kinney
Aah, for the modern life. Internet, baby wipes, ease, lemonade on tap. The only problem – well, one of them – is that Greg's mother is demanding the town switch off for a weekend, so good old-fashioned standards can be returned to. She's not the only person with ideas of old-fashioned standards – Greg's grandfather has moved in, so there're both his siblings, three adults – and a pig who thinks he's a family member. Mind you, with the usual ineptitude of a Wimpy Kid, probably nothing modern could prepare Greg for what's about to come, when a trip to a character-forming camp seems like the necessary easy way out… Full review...
Refuge by Anne Booth and Sam Usher
A donkey tells the story of how he was led by the man whilst he carried the woman, all the way to Bethlehem, where the baby was born. Soon after, the shepherds came and then the kings. But then the man had a dream - a dream of danger - and he knew that it was time for them all to leave. They left some gold for the innkeeper (they were not staying in the stable because they were poor) and went through the quiet streets hoping for the kindness of strangers, which they found. Finally they came to another land - to Egypt - and found refuge. Full review...
Human Race: 10 Centuries of Change on Earth by Ian Mortimer
We are an astonishing species. Over the past millennium of plagues and exploration, revolution and scientific discovery, women's rights and technological advances, human society has changed beyond recognition. Best known for his Time Traveller's Guide history books, Ian Mortimer here gives the reader a whistle-stop tour through ten centuries. Human Race contains the lunar leaps and lightbulb moments that, for better or worse, have sent humanity swerving down a path that no-one could have predicted. The question here is which of the last ten centuries saw the greatest change in human history? Full review...
The Book Collector by Alice Thompson
Meet Violet. Swept off her feet by a disarming encounter with a landed gentleman and bookshop owner at a coffee shop, she immediately falls in love with him, and is quickly married, and almost as quickly with child. When the boy is born, however, fairly understandable doubts creep in. Is her husband hiding anything behind his assuredness – especially when she wakes in the middle of the night alone? What ghost is left by the fact he lost his first wife and baby in childbirth? What should she understand from her own opinions about her new life, her new life's life, and the idea of a nanny looking after it? Just what is going on in her new country pile? Full review...
The Winter Isles by Antonia Senior
Scotland 1122: A son is born to a warlord on the Scottish Islands. The warlord GilleBride, is a man who doesn't realise his glory is receding. One day the realisation does hit him, along with a Viking raid. In the heat of invasion his son, although only 15, must take over. Can a lad actually lead a people? History will tell and legend will embellish for that boy is Somerled and this is his story. Full review...
Timeline by Peter Goes
Tick followed tock followed tick followed tock. Once, that is, we'd got over the Big Bang, which of course was silent. We flash forwards a few billion years to the creation of the earth, have a quick look at prehistory, then it's in with the world's happenings we can be sure of and date accurately. This book makes an attempt at conveying it all along one river of time – albeit with many tributaries – and with a strong visual style points us to all that is important about our past along the way. Flick through it backwards and you can recreate a different Guinness advert to the one I quoted – but it's probably worth a much longer look. Full review...
The Long Drawn Aisle by Simon Marshall
Edward and Richard Wilson are born into a comfortable and, indeed, powerful family. Their father is the MP Jack Wilson who is everything a Victorian father should be: severe, distant and occupied with his career. As the 20th century arrives and advances all three will feel the labour pains of conflict, the sons while living in Austria and the Balkans and their father through the lens of Britain's Parliament. It will be a bloody birth and its effects far reaching as two great empires prepare to fight, drawing in the rest of Europe. Full review...
Tom Gates 9: Top of the Class (Nearly) by Liz Pichon
Tom Gates has been told not to worry. Which is not a good thing. He's been told not to worry, but to try his best at the school test – so he does neither. His best friend has told him not to worry about having just left an incriminating portrait of one of his teachers in a library reference book, even though he has to worry about getting it back before anyone else sees it. Especially, that is, when the biggest bully in the year above is also turning his hand to graffiti and has the power to get other people in trouble… Full review...
Wars of the Roses: Bloodline: Book 3 (The Wars of the Roses) by Conn Iggulden
The Wars of the Roses continue. Margaret of Anjou becomes a catalyst for what lays ahead and then rescues her husband, the debilitated Henry VI, from the forces of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick and the recently executed Richard of York. However York's last words weren't empty rhetoric: by killing the father Margaret has indeed unleashed the sons. Edward of March for one is out for revenge; a fact that throws the English throne and the safety of Queen's spymaster Derry Brewer into grave doubt. Full review...
White Boots by Noel Streatfeild
Many moons ago, when I was a young girl obsessed with Torvill and Dean and wishing we lived much closer to a skating rink, I discovered Noel Streatfeild's wonderful Shoe stories including this one, White Boots. It soon became one of my favourite re-reads, so it was interesting to come back to the story as a grown up and find that it is still funny and engaging, all these years later, and that it still has the enduring power to make me wish for my own pair of white skating boots too! Full review...
A Crown for Cold Silver: Book One of the Crimson Empire by Alex Marshall
Zosia seems just like any other old lady. Indeed that's the mistake that Sir Efrain Hjort made as he presents her with her husband's head, severed to encourage her compliance. As Zosia hears the screams coming from what used to be her village but now the site of Hjort's latest initiative Zosia makes a vow. She'll look up some of her old acquaintances; to be more precise, the five villains she used to lead. For Zosia isn't actually that ordinary. Zosia is the legendary Cobalt Queen – a little creakier now than when she faked her death of course, but one thing is certain: she will avenge her people. Full review...
The Glass Room (D I Vera Stanhope) by Ann Cleeves
Inspector Vera Stanhope isn't big on friends but the hippy neighbours are good to her in terms of home-brew beer and conversation and when one of them goes missing she feels obliged to investigate. She knows that she'd be furious if one of the team was playing at private investigator and it leaves her in the embarrassing position of being first on the scene after a murder has been discovered. One of the tutors has been brutally murdered at The Writers' House and the other residents have made an easy assumption about who wielded the knife, but Vera must act professionally even though she knows that's she's hardly impartial. Full review...
She Who Was No More by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac
Everyone knows that unsettling sensation you get when you've done something bad: that clutching, unpleasant, constant feeling that every odd look or leading question thrown your way means the other person has figured out precisely what you've done. In this dark and mind-bending novella, Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac capture perfectly the unease and gradual desperation felt by Ferdinand Ravinel, a travelling salesman who enacts a plot to murder his wife Mireille with the aid of his lover, Lucienne. The tension rackets up with every paragraph, and had me scrambling to the final page. Full review...
John le Carre: The Biography by Adam Sisman
Some twenty years ago David Cornwell, better known as novelist John le Carré, told a couple of would-be writers about him that he did not believe in 'authorised' biographies or critiques. Adam Sisman, who has since then been granted exclusive access to the man and his private archive, can therefore consider himself a lucky man. Full review...
1,234 QI Facts to Leave You Speechless by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson and James Harkin
No US President has ever died in May. There are fewer women on corporate boards in America than there are men named John. Dogs investigate bad smells with their right nostril and good smells with their left. Apollo 11's fuel consumption was seven inches to the gallon. The first occupational disease ever recorded in medical literature was 'chimney sweep's scrotum'. The song 'Yes, We Have No Bananas' was written by Leon Trotsky's nephew. In the 18th Century, King George I declared all pigeon droppings to be property of the Crown. I hardly think I need say any more. Review over. Full review...
