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.
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The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two by Catherynne M Valente
A while ago a friend recommended a book called The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. I have to say, the title alone intrigued me, but somehow that title sat on my 'to get' pile and I never actually got around to reading it. Since then several other people (all adults) have suggested I might like it, so when I saw the latest book in this series was available I decided to give it a try. I really should have read the first two books, I think. This is the third in the series, and I believe there are going to be five altogether. There are some series which you can dip into without feeling too lost, but this isn't one of them! Full review...
Old Dog, New Tricks by Bali Rai
Nick is a miserable old sod by anyone's definition. His equally mangy dog, Nelson, is the only friend he has, as his nasty nature puts everyone off. But while he may be unpleasant to most people, he is downright horrible when the Singh family move in, bringing out the worst of his racist views - but can a man who likes Bob Marley really hate anyone of another colour? Is Nick just an ignorant and offensive old git, or is there something more beneath the surface? No one seems to have really bothered to find out before a common love of dogs draws young Harvey Singh to attempt to befriend not only the unkempt dog, but the lonely old man as well. Full review...
Snowblind by Christopher Golden
People in Coventry Massachusetts get nervous when a big storm comes in. Many have never come to terms with the legacy of killer storm a dozen years before. The townspeople have a sense of foreboding, as if they realise the storm was something more than a natural disaster. But for Jake Schapiro the storm was never an act of God. If anything it was closer to an act of something pure evil. Jake saw the creatures that rode the storm, and saw them claim his brother. He has spent twelve years wishing for another chance, and he is about to get it. This storm is just as cold, just as brutal and just as deadly as the last, but this one is bringing something else. Along with the bitter winds, snow and ice, this storm will bring back the dead. When you lose someone you love, the longing, or wishing for just one more day, one more hour or even a few minutes can be overwhelming - but there is an old saying: 'be careful what you wish for, you just might get it'. Full review...
Come to Me Quietly by A L Jackson
Aleena hasn't seen Jared for six years. Not since he hit the very bottom of his downward spiral and ended up in prison. She's trying to move on, let go of the boy she secretly loved all her life. Just as she's starting to make progress, Jared reappears. Full review...
Line of Fire : Diary of an Unknown Soldier (August, September 1914) by Barroux
A scientist can tell a bit about an animal's nature just by observing the beginnings of its life ('it's in water, ergo it's probably a fish'). They don't need to study every ant in the colony to see how ants collaborate and work together, for the detail is pretty much shared from one ant to the next. So it is with soldiers, at least as far as this book is concerned. You can pick one soldier from all the battalions and learn something of soldierly life. You can see the nature of the war from what happens at the outset. And here all we get is the outset, for this graphic novel is based on a manuscript the artist found purely by chance, of a solitary soldier's diary that covers only a couple of weeks in 1914, and stops obliquely. Full review...
Tesla 1 by Mark Lingane
Sebastian has lost both his parents. His father died of a mysterious wasting disease whereas his mother is just... well... lost. The only thing he has he has to remember his mother by is a note telling him to go to the mysterious Steam Academy. However, first he has to find his way there in a futuristic Australia without widespread technology but with dangerous cyborg warriors. What's worse, despite fighting humans in general for thousands of years, the cyborgs now seem to have turned their attention and energy to killing Sebastian in particular. What's he done to deserve that? More to the point, whatever he's done, how can he survive? Full review...
Original Skin by David Mark
DS Aector McAvoy was rather hoping that he might be getting a reputation for his investigative skills but when we first meet him in Original Skin it's his ability with animals which is to the fore. If you want a runaway horse stopping then he's your man. He's distracted about something else too: whilst other detectives are working on a case which involves travellers and violent drug-related crime he's unable to get the case of Simon Appleyard out of his mind. Simon was deeply into the swinging scene and liked to live life to the full, so why did this slender young man with the peacock feathers tattooed on his back commit suicide one morning? Full review...
Still Life With Breadcrumbs by Anna Quindlen
I was going to say that Rebecca Winter is a well-known photographer, but that's not quite how Rebecca sees it. She had major success with Still Life With Breadcrumbs and became a household name - almost a feminist icon - but the success has faded into the past. People who think about it guess that she's well-off, if not wealthy but the truth is different. When we meet Rebecca she's woken in the middle of the night by what sounds very like a gunshot - but she's not in her New York apartment. She's a couple of hours drive away in a rented cottage. It's the finances, you see. If she lets her New York property and rents somewhere cheaper the difference allows her to pay her mother's nursing home fees, a contribution to her father's rent, some assistance to her son - and all the other obligations we accumulate as we get older. Full review...
Stone Bruises by Simon Beckett
When we meet Sean it's obvious that he's on the run, but it will be a long time before we find out what from. He's driving, in France and he knows that he has to get rid of the car, but when he does so he finds himself in far worse difficulty. Cutting across farmland he puts his foot in a metal mantrap and can't free himself. The damage to his foot is considerable and he soon loses consciousness - but when he comes to he's in the hayloft at the farm, being looked after by the farmer's elder daughter. The farmer is definitely not pleased when he finds out, the younger daughter in a mantrap in her own right and there's a lot of animosity against the family in the local village. Full review...
The Facades by Eric Lundgren
Sven and Molly Norberg live in the American mid-western town of Trude. At least Sven still does; Molly has gone missing. Night after night Sven leaves Kyle, his teenage son, home alone while he scours the streets, revisiting places that he and Molly wandered through together in order to find her. Meanwhile Trude has problems of its own and the librarians are armed and ready! Full review...
The Tournament by Matthew Reilly
Michael Reilly is somewhat of a guilty pleasure of mine; his novels are hi-octane adventures that are often as ludicrous as they are sublime. ‘The Tournament’ is a departure from his action packed Scarecrow and Jack West thrillers; instead creating an alternative history for our own Queen Elizabeth I. Why was she such a formidable leader whose reluctance to marry and dislike of the Catholics were only part of her make-up? Reilly poses a hypothetical tale about a 13 year old Bess going to Constantinople to watch a tournament of the world’s greatest chess players. Here she will be embroiled in a murder mystery alongside her tutor Roger Ascham. Full review...
Floundering by Romy Ash
Loretta collects her boys Jordy and Tom from school as if it's the most normal thing in the world, but it's not; not for them anyway. Jordy and Tom have been living with their grandparents after being abandoned by this woman who refuses to be called 'Mum'. As they get further from their eastern Australian home it remains an adventure for Tom but Jordy's more sullen. Once they arrive at their ultimate destination - a ramshackle caravan park - Tom begins to understand why but not before both lads realise that their worries are just beginning. Full review...
Red by Libby Gleeson
'Mud. In her mouth, her nose and her eyes. Mud in her hair and caked on her neck and her arms. Mud filling her shoes and seeping through her clothes. She lay sprawled on her side, a garbled, barely distinct sound coming from her: jaymartinjaymartin.'
Who is jaymartin? And who is this girl? Red doesn't know who she is or what has happened to her. She doesn't know what has caused the devastation all around her. Rescued from the mud by Peri, Red discovers that she's in Sydney in the aftermath of a terrible hurricane. Chaos is all around as the emergency response struggles to get to grips with the dead, injured and displaced. Through the noticeboard at the rescue centre, Red and Peri discover that she has a name. And a father. And a frightening secret. Full review...
Dead Ends by Erin Lange
Dane is a rebel who's close to getting kicked out of a school; Billy D is the new kid in town. One of Dane's few rules of behaviour is that he won't hit kids in special ed, so Billy D figures hanging around with someone tough who won't hit him is a good idea - although it's not that easy to convince Dane of this. He really needs to, though, because he has a puzzle to solve and Dane could be the perfect person to help him. Full review...
Play It Again: An Amateur Against The Impossible by Alan Rusbridger
I’ve maintained for a long time that I’ll read anything, if it’s well-enough written. So it was with this fascinating memoir, even though it’s a year in the life of an amateur pianist, and I don’t play the piano – or indeed a note of music. I couldn’t even have placed the name Alan Rusbridger in his professional role before I read the book. A quick browse through the first couple of pages on Amazon revealed that the author could indeed tell a clear story: it is his stock-in-trade as Editor of the Guardian. And the book duly held me through a messy, interrupted week of bedtime reading. Full review...
It Felt Like A Kiss by Sarra Manning
Ellie Cohen lives with two of her best friends, works in an exclusive gallery, and sees her loving Jewish grandparents every first Friday of the month. Her single mother, Ari, has always been the epitome of cool and is Ellie’s best friend and confidante. The only thing they don’t talk about is Billy Kay, Ellie’s biological father. That doesn’t stop him being one of the nation’s favourites, recently knighted, and talked about by pretty much everyone else. But Billy is a non-issue for Ellie. She doesn’t need him, she has Chester, her mum’s best friend, who has always been enough of a dad if she needed. Her only real trouble is her penchant for lame ducks, or fixer-uppers. Full review...
Nomad (Faery Rebels) by R J Anderson
Ok. Before we begin, you should know that Nomad is the second in a sequence. So if you haven't yet read Swift, you should probably start there. Don't read this review: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.
We meet up with Ivy again as Full review...
London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing by Travis Elborough
The concept of people from overseas countries buying and owning old and long-established British industries and works of art is not new. Yet one of the most unusual sales of this kind occurred in March 1968. It was a time of British economic crisis (where and when have we heard that before) and the ‘I’m Backing Britain’ campaign, and a time when the concept of heritage was unfashionable and the authorities seemed to attach more value to modernity than to relics of the Regency and the Victorian age. Full review...
Squishy McFluff: the Invisible Cat! by Pip Jones
Meet Ava. She's a girl of great imagination and a big heart, who brings an invisible cat home to mum one day, who humours Ava by feeding it invisible food and letting the two bond. But when mess gets made, and mistakes about the house happen, Ava declares innocence, and blames it all on the cat – and you'd be surprised how many accidents can be the result of having an invisible kitten indoors… Full review...
Cairo by Chris Womersley
Tom Button has had enough of small-town Australian life, and wants to grasp the nettle at the earliest opportunity and escape for more exotic places as soon as he's free of school and he and a friend can afford it. Until the friend kills that pipe-dream. Plan B for Tom soon becomes the life of a university student in Melbourne, with the chance to live in the apartment his aunt left behind when she died – at least it's in an exotically named development building, called Cairo. But Plan C soon forms for Tom, when he falls in awkwardly with some bohemian neighbours – who still, despite being ten years older, have plans of their own for making their own way to a better life – just not the way Tom ever suspected… Full review...
Dunger by Joy Cowley
There is nothing worse than two people who constantly argue, like brother and sister Will and Lissy. Well, actually there are – two people who constantly argue and who need hearing aids but carefully ignore that fact, like their grandparents. The siblings are expecting a regular trip away – fancy clothes and fancying boys for her, swotty things for him, but no – the recession means their closest approximation to a summer break is to repair and put right the oldster's bach – summer home, if you like. What's more, they'll be paid for it. But is any amount of money suitable payment for the primitive horrors to come? Full review...
My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossel
Scott Stossel is anxious. There are no two ways about it. He has been anxious for as long as he can remember, with dark recollections of his turbulent childhood, much of which seems to have been spent nervously gazing out of the window wondering whether his parents were coming home or if they had died in a terrible accident. Then of course, there was the sister who was very possibly an 'adult midget who had been trained to play the part of a five-year-old girl' helping her colleagues (his parents) perform experiments on him before abandoning him. Clearly Stossel’s anxiety has been fuelled by a rather active imagination over the years. Full review...
The Undertaking by Audrey Magee
Peter Faber has decided to become part of the new Nazi initiative. He will marry Katharina Spinell, a woman he won't even meet till their honeymoon. In return he'll receive honeymoon leave from the Russian front while she will secure a widow's pension should anything happen to him, hopefully providing the Reich with one or two more Aryan babies on the way. Peter may not be the son-in-law Katharina's parents envisaged but their disappointment is blunted by their luxurious lifestyle under the patronage of the sinister Dr Weinart. However, this is still wartime and Peter must eventually return to Russia and whatever fate awaits him. Full review...
First Novel by Nicholas Royle
Paul Kinder lectures in first novels at a Manchester university and, coincidentally, he's also published a novel. Yes, just the one. When not working he enjoys various pursuits, including sex in car parks when offered the opportunity (i.e. not very often at all). (If the car park is on a flight path, all the better.) He personally doesn't see it as a problem, although not all his life has been problem free. No, indeed it hasn't! Full review...
Live At the Brixton Academy: A riotous life in the music business by Simon Parkes and J S Rafaeli
Who on earth would want to buy and run a live music venue in deepest Brixton, and manage to keep it running for fifteen years, transforming it against all the odds into what becomes one of Britain’s most iconic establishments of its kind? Such an undertaking calls for somebody with special managerial skills who can keep one step ahead of the game, walking a precarious tightrope, keeping gangsters, punters, promoters and the local authorities onside. It also requires a good deal of luck. Full review...
Best Counting Book Ever by Richard Scarry
There are a number of things I like about this book. One is the illustrations which are reminiscent of the Richard Scarry books of my youth, not surprising since this is a reissue of a book that first hit the shelves in 1975. They are bright and colourful, but simple too and the restrained plain colour pallet is refreshing in a world of patterns and glitter. Full review...
This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash
Easter Quilby is twelve years old. She and her sister Ruth are in a children's home. Not so long ago they woke up to find their mother slouched across the bed, dead. Drink and drugs and a hard, sad life had finally got to her, or maybe her body just gave up on it. Their father, Wade Chesterfield, sometime baseball star, had lit out on them three years earlier. Full review...