Book Reviews From The Bookbag
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. We can even direct you to help for custom book reviews! Visit www.everychildareader.org to get free writing tips and www.genecaresearchreports.com will help you get your paper written for free.
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The Massacre of Mankind by Stephen Baxter
An intellectual property no longer dies with the author. After a certain period the copyright is lifted so that an independent author can tackle the characters, hence the proliferation of Sherlock Holmes books. For many fans of the original, these books feel like cover versions and are best avoided. It is only when the estate of the author gets involved that their interest is piqued. H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds left enough of a door open to explore further and when you hire as an experienced a science fiction author as Stephen Baxter to pick up the official story, it may just be worth a read. Full review...
Gordon's Great Escape by Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet
The life of the humble balloon is one full of fear and dangers. Imagine going out of the house each day and all that protects your vulnerable self is a thin sheet of taut rubber. Even if you do get to survive into your dotage, this is not a long time. Who has not left a balloon alone for a week or so, it starts to sag and go wrinkly until it is nothing more than a floppy bag. Depressing as this may be, Gordon the balloon looks on the bright side of life and is determined to enjoy every moment he has. Full review...
The Girl Before by J P Delaney
Jane is recovering from recent trauma and needs to change her life, starting with where she lives. After seeing the dives she can afford in central London on her salary, One Folgate Street seems like a dream come true. Ultra modern, smart technology living - a small haven in a big city... however, it comes with some very tight restrictions, rules that must be obeyed. Jane is ready for a big change in her life, so she accepts the conditions of the house and moves in. However, the longer Jane lives there, the more interested she becomes in the previous tenant, a woman named Emma who died there, Emma who’s life Jane’s is starting to mimic. Suddenly, this haven doesn’t feel so safe. Full review...
Pop Pickers and Music Vendors: David Jacobs, Alan Freeman, John Peel, Tommy Vance and Roger Scott by John Van der Kiste
You know those questions you get in celebrity interviews - 'which extinct being would you most like to see brought back to life?' Well, I'd like to see Jimmy Savile brought back, so that he could get his comeuppance. It's not just the damage he did to children and young people, dreadful as that was - it's the shadow he cast over the entertainment industry. We know that he wasn't alone in what he did, but somehow there's a whole era of entertainment which has been tarred by the same brush. John Van der Kiste has turned the spotlight away from Savile and on to five of the great DJs of the music industry. Full review...
Tales of Loving and Leaving by Gaby Weiner
In Tales of Loving and Leaving, author Gaby Weiner tells the story of three of her family members: her grandmother, Amalia Moszkowicz Dinger; her mother, Steffi Dinger; and her father, Uszer Frocht. Full review...
Henry III: The Son of Magna Carta by Matthew Lewis
For a monarch whose reign over England of fifty-six years was unequalled until the nineteenth century, Henry III remains curiously little-known. Nobody could claim that he was a particularly outstanding or successful ruler, but the fact that he held his throne for so long in an unstable age was no mean achievement in itself. Full review...
Shadow Magic by Joshua Khan
This is fantasy in the vast, epic sense of the word. There are warring royal Houses, strange and wonderful settings, unexpected heroes and monsters – lots and lots of monsters, some of which, unfortunately, are human. There are battles in the grand tradition, with our hero and heroine fighting injustice and evil, and there are deaths, losses and triumphs. But that's where the same-old, same-old ends. Full review...
Mercy Killing by Lisa Cutts
Albie Woodville was involved with the local amateur dramatic society and when it was decided that they would stage Annie and involve children from a local school the news was broken that he was a convicted paedophile. A local widow with two young children had started a tentative relationship with him: she terminated the relationship and the amdrams told him that he was no longer a member. It was bad enough, but deserved - then someone else took the law into their own hands and decided that the world would be a better place without Albie Woodville in it. He was brutally murdered. Full review...
Catherine of Aragon: An Intimate Life of Henry VIII's True Wife by Amy Licence
Catherine of Aragon, the first of Henry VIII's six wives and Queens, was arguably the most unhappy figure during the Tudor era who did not meet her end on the scaffold or at the stake. The cliché 'tragic love story' must be a fitting one in her case. Full review...
AniMalcolm by David Baddiel and Jim Field
Malcolm’s family likes animals. No, it’s more than that, in fact, everyone in his family adores every kind of animal. Malcolm has a whole menagerie of animals living in his house to the utter delight of his parents and his social-media frenzied teenage sister. They love it when they walk them, cuddle them, feed them and watch them sleep. The problem is Malcolm doesn't get it. He doesn't necessarily hate the animals; he just doesn't understand their attraction. As he lives in an animal-loving house, he feels somewhat of an outcast - he doesn't quite fit in and belong. That's all OK though because Malcolm is off on his Year 6 residential trip. Away from his family and a break from the animals. In his excited-haste he didn't quite take enough notice of the location for his three days of freedom – Orwell Farm. During his time away from home Malcolm quickly learns a lot more intimate details about the animals than he could have ever imagined and begins to respect each one in their own unique way. Full review...
Under a Pole Star by Stef Penney
1948: Elderly Flora Mackie is invited on a press trip to the North Pole; a trip that takes her back through her life. Flora remembers her childhood with her father on whaling ships in the seas around Greenland, her marriage born of ambition and misaligned lust and the result: the Arctic exploration team she led in the late 19th century. This was a trip that had many knock-on effects including death and love. Full review...
An Almond for a Parrot by Wray Delaney
It was when Tully gained a step-mother that her education really started. That was the beginning of the road to discovery. The discovery that she can realise ghosts for others, that she can escape the cruelty of an alcoholic father and the discovery of the income and pleasure her body can generate. That, in turn, leads to the rather classy Fairy House brothel and, now, the condemned cell in Newgate Prison. As she awaits her fate, Tully writes her autobiography An Almond for a Parrot and allows us to read over her shoulder. Full review...
The Black Friar: Damian Seeker 2 by S G Maclean
When a dead monk is discovered walled into a disused monastery the local gossip is awash with remarks on the miracle of his well-preserved body all these years after the monastery was abandoned. Investigator and Captain of Cromwell's guard Damian Seeker has other ideas. This is a recent non-clergy death. This is Carter Blyth, a man on such a secret mission that even Cromwell didn't know about it. This will add complications to the already convoluted and dangerous path that Seeker will take to solve the crime, one of the complications being very close to home. Full review...
The Shipyard Girls by Nancy Revell
1940 and the workload of Thompsons, the Tyneside shipyard, increases so much they do the unthinkable: employ women to perform the roles traditionally taken by men. It's the bravest as well as the strongest women who accept the challenge and, under the expert tuition of Rosie, begin to take their places beside their male counterparts. It's not an easy ride for any of them. In fact, as they band together, there's one particular group that will face dangers in their daily lives as real - and more imminent - than any encountered on the slipway. Full review...
That's Not English by Erin Moore
It's not clear who first coined the expression divided by a common language about Brits and Americans, but as this highly entertaining book demonstrates, it isn't our language that divides us. On the contrary the language simply reflects the divisions that exist. We tend to watch a lot of TV at home, but rarely find anything that totally engrosses us. As a result we tend to talk over a lot of TV. We play games with some of what we watch. One of those games is spotting anachronisms. Another is "would she ever have got the job" – particularly fun with crime programmes that think it's ok for lab techs to have long free-flowing locks when doing evidence analysis or have Detective Sergeants who frankly wouldn't have passed their CV submission. A long-running one involves spotting the spread of British English in American TV shows. Erin Moore explains why. Not directly, indeed I'm not sure she even makes the connection – but the fact that there are a lot more Brits in the higher echelons of US TV-making might just explain why CSI, NCIS, Law and Order and a whole host of other shows will slip in words like wallet, handbag, boot (of a car), pavement… Full review...
A Tale of Trees: The Battle to save Britain's Ancient Woodland by Derek Niemann
Ancient British woodland is something very special indeed. It captures our imagination, connects us to nature and fuels our creativity. The British have an almost symbiotic relationship with woodland and most of us have a small local patch where we can get away from the hustle and bustle of the modern world. It's hard to imagine life without our native woods, and yet in the 40 years following the war we lost more ancient woodland than in the previous 400. The destruction was large-scale and merciless and by 1985, we'd already lost a third of our ancient woodland. Predictions for the future were bleak: find a way to halt the decline or there will be nothing left outside nature reserves by 2020. Full review...
The Watcher by Ross Armstrong
Lily Gullick lives with her husband Aiden in a new-build flat opposite an estate which has been marked for demolition. A keen birdwatcher, she can't help spying on her neighbours. Then one day Lily sees something suspicious through her binoculars and soon her elderly neighbour Jean is found dead. Lily, intrigued by the social divide in her local area as it becomes increasingly gentrified, knows that she has to act. But her interference is not going unnoticed, and as she starts to get close to the truth, her own life comes under threat. But can Lily really trust everything she sees? Full review...
Star Wars: Galactic Atlas by Emil Fortune and Tim McDonagh
At the time of writing this review, people are eagerly tapping away at phones, laptops and screens everywhere to find out what they can about Rogue One, the Star Wars film that's the first live action cinema effort to be off to one edge of the canon, and is five whole weeks away. Perhaps, however, there is a chance that all the many books being released that mention the ability to tie in to Rogue One will let slip something important. The volume at hand includes a map from… said movie, and all the maps here initially seem to feature a huge amount of information. Could valuable secrets be herein? Full review...
Romeo and/or Juliet by Ryan North
For all those who think tragedy plots are too restricted and prescribed, read on. In these pages you too will see that Romeo had lots of options en route to hitting the bottle. Likewise, she could have turned away from her predestined path at no end of junctures. And to what result? Well, happy marriage and a kid called Ben, because the leads have just banged people's heads together and stopped the quarrelling, or Death by Tybalt (him) or a long life running an establishment curing murderous women, such as a Lady M (her). Full review...
The Song from Somewhere Else by A F Harrold and Levi Pinfold
If you were being stalked by the school bully and his two sidekicks, and if a kindly soul rescued you from them in the park, you'd be grateful, right? Or would you? Frank knows she should be grateful when Nick rescues her from Neil Noble and his acolytes Rob and Roy. But she also knows that Nick - laughed at for being flea-ridden and smelly at school - is not a person you'd want to be associated with. So Frank intends to say thanks and get the heck out of Nick's house as quickly as she can... Full review...
How to Save a Superhero by Caryl Hart and Ed Eaves
It's just an ordinary day for Albie – he's playing with his toys just like any little boy. However little does he know that his day is going to be super in more ways than one. This is another fantastic adventure in the the series of books by Carol Hart and Ed Eaves. Full review...
Wild and Precious Life by Deborah Ziegler
You probably remember the case of Brittany Maynard; it was much in the news in the latter half of 2014. Diagnosed with a massive brain tumour at age 29, Brittany chose to move from her home in California to Oregon so that she could take drugs to end her life at a time of her choosing using that state's Death with Dignity Act. She and her family appeared in documentaries and national news media and gave official testimony to raise awareness about the cause of assisted dying for the terminally ill. A film about her story is also in the works. Full review...
Winter Magic by Abi Elphinstone (Editor)
With everything from dragons to mysterious crimes, voice-stealing witches to time travel, and magical worlds to first performances of world-famous ballets, this is a collection of short stories that delights from start to finish. Anthologies of short stories can sometimes fall flat, with one or two good ones and then a bunch of mediocre fillers, but this collection has no weak links...all the stories are good, and most of them are brilliant. I felt entirely caught up in each individual world as I read, loving the varied and extremely likeable heroines throughout. Full review...
The Tigerboy (Faber Children's Classics) by Ted Hughes
This is a small, but beautifully formed book. Containing just one short story it is perhaps over a little quickly, considering the price of the book, but it is a really lovely object to own. It is the story of a perfectly normal little boy, with the very ordinary name of Fred. Fred, however, knows that there is something different about him, and that he is special. Everything about his life is unremarkable until one night his foot starts to itch and he finds himself turning into a tiger! Full review...
