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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Circus of Thieves and the Raffle of Doom by William Sutcliffe
Here is the warning for reviewers who have received a copy of Circus of Thieves:
'If you are chronologically vulnerable, easily confused, or allergic to hiccups in the space-time continuum, do not attempt to read unless you are wearing thick sunglasses or a snorkel with mask - flippers optional.'
Ahem. I'm guilty on all counts. I don't own thick sunglasses or a snorkel with a mask. I read it anyway. So sue me! Full review...
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton
Ava Lavender is the youngest in a long line of strange women. Her mother is strange. Her grandmother is strange. Her aunts were strange. But Ava, perhaps, is the strangest of all. Because she was born with wings. In The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, this winged girl narrates the story of her family and how they came to live in the magical Seattle neighbourhood where her grandmother runs a bakery.
It's a tale of magic but it's also a tale of tragedy and disaster and death and lost love. Girls turn into canaries. Ghosts follow living siblings. Pastries cause shared emotions. And as she tells the story, Ava tries to make sense of herself. She isn't normal. Is normal better? Or do her wings come with a special destiny? Full review...
To Bed On Thursdays by Jenny Selby-Green
The advert asked for a young man, but seventeen year old Jenny Selby-Green applied anyway. She met all the other attributes, and the alternative would be having to take whatever job she was offered via the Labour Exchange, seeing as she’d already rejected the maximum of two offers under the 1950s Direction of Labour. And so, she became a journalist, or journalist of sorts anyway. Full review...
Speaking from Among the Bones by Alan Bradley
Many eleven year olds would be excited at the thought of a five-hundred-year-old tomb being opened to (hopefully) reveal the bones of the local saint, but Flavia de Luce had what might almost be called a professional interest. Before the opening of the tomb she'd been associated with four dead bodies (to say that she was instrumental in solving the murders sounds just a little too much like bragging doesn't it?) but this time she really wasn't expecting to find Mr Collicut, the church organist who had been missing for six weeks. Still, there he was, dead - and wearing a gas mask. Full review...
The Autistic Brain by Temple Grandin and Richard Panek
Temple Grandin is a lady of many labels: professor of animal science, bestselling author, consultant, activist, engineer, public speaker and subject of an award-winning biopic. She also happens to be autistic, a label she earned at a very early age back in the days before the majority of people knew what autism was. She describes the timing of her diagnosis as fortuitous; only a few years later and the accepted ‘treatment’ for autistic children was removal from their parents and life in an institution. Full review...
Where Do Camels Belong?: The story and science of invasive species by Ken Thompson
Much of what passes for invasion biology is poorly supported hype. So says our author, and you can easily fall into agreeing with him after reading his book. In much the same way the Daily Mail et al have their own attitudes to immigrants of the human kind, so it would appear do many people have similar notions about immigrant species. And the end results might be much more damaging. Full review...
The Collected Works of A J Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
A J Fikry is not having a good time. He's lost his wife to a car crash, and he's not making that much money. The book store he runs, stuck out on a limb on a quiet island community, is too remote to turn a profit year-round, and he has just dismissed the latest publisher's rep to turn up at his door, partly because her previous counterpart, an inconsequential part of A J's life when all is said and done, had died and he didn't know about it. But his bad time is about to get a lot worse, as the one thing he owns worth the most – a rare book, more valuable than his house, his business, anything – is about to vanish. Which bizarrely will cause several major changes to his one-person household… Full review...
The Last Boat Home by Dea Brovig
Then: On the farm above a remote Norwegian hamlet, in 1976, schoolgirl Else is waiting for her mother to return through the wind and the snow. She is also clutching at the kitchen table as the contractions worsen.
Now: fast forward to 2009. Else now lives in the town the hamlet has grown into, on the back of oil money. Her daughter has a daughter of her own, but still spends many a night not coming home. She must have met someone the eleven-year-old granddaughter says matter-of-factly. Else has made a life for herself, running a spa, looking after her daughter and her granddaughter. A quiet life, but not such a bad one. Full review...
Skeletons by Jane Fallon
Jen doesn’t have the happiest of families, so she’s immediately drawn to her husband Jason’s. Luckily they welcome her with open arms and she’s soon like a fourth child to Charles and Amelia. So when she discovers a secret that could tear lives apart, it’s as devastating to her as if it were her own parents. She has a choice to make: share the burden and ruin relationships in the process, or keep it to herself and shoulder it all alone. Full review...
Steaming to Victory: How Britain's Railways Won the War by Michael Williams
Soon after the end of the First World War, the British railways entered what is generally regarded as their golden age, with the heyday of the ‘Big Four’ companies, the LNER (London and North Eastern), LMS (London, Midlands and Scottish), GWR (Great Western) and Southern Railways. By 1939 they were beginning to lose their virtual monopoly of land-based transport to lorries, buses and coaches. Nevertheless, as war became increasingly inevitable, they played a vital part in the preparation to keep the country moving, keeping industry and the war effort supplied, helping in the evacuation of Dunkirk, or as their press office put it in a pamphlet of 1943, 'tackling the biggest job in transport history'. Full review...
Sesame Seade Mysteries 1: Sleuth on Skates by Clementine Beauvais and Sarah Horne
Eleven-year-old Sesame Seade has been waiting all her life to be a super sleuth, so when a student journalist disappears and no-one seems all that bothered, she decides to solve the case herself. Can she track down the vanished girl before her parents work out what's going on? Full review...
Never Ending by Martyn Bedford
Sent to a clinic which specialises in using unconventional methods to help people get over grief, Shiv is forced to confront the death of her beloved younger brother Declan. Like everyone else in the clinic, she’s convinced that she caused the death herself. Will she finally find the peace that her parents are seeking for her, even if she doesn't think she deserves it herself? Full review...
The Bluffer's Guide to Etiquette (Bluffer's Guides) by William Hanson
If you ask people what they fear most in any social situation most will tell you that it's not knowing how to behave. They'll be fine about the basics, but it's those little niceties - how to introduce yourself, what to ask for as an aperitif, how to address someone, for instance which can suddenly reveal you as a parvenu. William Hanson gives us a quick trip through the essentials in a book which is very readable and - in places - hilariously funny. Full review...
A Little Piece of England: A tale of self-sufficiency by John Jackson
Here at Bookbag we're great fans of John Jackson. We loved his Tales for Great Grandchildren and Brahma Dreaming: Legends from Hindu Mythology so it was something of a treat to meet the author on his own ground, so to speak. Originally published as A Bucket of Nuts and a Herring Net: The Birth of a Spare-Time Farm this is actually Jackson's first book and thirty-five years later we're delighted that it's been republished in hardback complete with the original black-and-white illustrations by Val Biro. Full review...
Going Over by Beth Kephart
Ada is someone whom many of the readers of this book would aspire to be – only fifteen but working at a Kindergarten, changing her appearance at whim with fake beauty spots and punky hair-dye, spending far too many midnight hours creating politicised graffiti. She also lives in one of the most libertarian and Bohemian areas of Berlin. Or, I should say, West Berlin – for this is the early 1980s and the Wall is still standing. And unfortunately for her the love of her life is Stefan, a friend since toddler-age due to their grandmothers being best friends, and she can only see him three or four times a year as he lives in Communist East Berlin. Can her patience with what she sees as his reluctance to risk his life to escape last long enough? Full review...
The French Promise by Fiona McIntosh
A few years on from The Lavender Keeper Luc the former resistance fighter and Lisette the former British spy have survived the ravages of war and start a new life together in England with their little boy Harry. However Luc can't settle, missing the lavender farming that's in his blood. This is remedied when the freshly transplanted family move again, this time to Tasmania. Nonetheless they still have a lot to learn; the biggest lessons being that no one can outrun the past and that fate isn't always kind. Full review...
Island on Fire: The extraordinary story of Laki, the volcano that turned eighteenth-century Europe dark by Alexandra Witze and Jeff Kanipe
I'm fascinated by volcanoes, by their uncontrollability and potential to disrupt way beyond their immediate environment and for years to come, but I've always struggled to find books which were accessible to someone without specialist knowledge - or at least more behind them than my very basic qualifications. Like many people my attention was drawn to Iceland when Eyjafjallajokull erupted in the spring of 2010, not because of the plight of the Icelanders and their livestock, but because of the disruption it caused over much of Europe, I'm afraid. I began to look at other volcanoes in Iceland - particularly Katla, reputed historically to erupt in conjunction with Eyjafjallajokull. It's likely that a full-scale eruption of Katla would cause even more disruption than its little sister - and then I started to look back at other eruptions in Iceland. The one which few people seem to know about is Laki - which might have been one of the triggers of the French Revolution. Full review...
A Piggy Pickle (Pip Street) by Jo Simmons
Problems are mounting for the people of Pip Street. Every evening the power goes out, so the whole street is plunged into darkness – not good for Bobby who's still young enough to be scared of the dark. Nor is it good news for the mysteriously popular new electrical shop at the end of the road – could all the gadgets bought at Gizmo World be the cause? Well, given the cover artwork and title of this adventure, I think the answer is a roundly firm NO, but there's really no harm in finding out what the action does involve. Full review...
Cowgirl by G R Gemin
Gemma has grown up on a housing estate in South Wales where muggings and burglaries are commonplace, her dad is in prison, her mum has given up hope for the future and Gemma argues with her younger brother. She has given up on finding happiness and escapes from her daily routine by riding her bike into the nearby countryside. On one of these trips she bumps into the notorious Cowgirl and after their initial hostilities have thawed an unlikely friendship blossoms and together the girls, with the help of a dozen cows, discover that kindness, cooperation and perseverance can restore hope to a broken community. Full review...
Off to the Park! by Stephen Cheetham
It's a nice day and we're off to the park. Shoes on first - tie the laces - and then we're off down the street. We go over the road by the crossing (press the button, please) and open the gate into the park. It's a metal gate and we can feel the cold of the metal and hear the squeak as the gate opens and we're on to the gravel path. It's a long, winding path and we can hear the stones scrunch. But there's plenty to play with here, from kicking a ball around to going on the swings and climbing the steps so that we can come down the slide. There's even a tyre to swing on - and when we've played for ages there's sure to be an ice cream to enjoy. Full review...
The Boy with the Porcelain Blade by Den Patrick
Lucien has reached his 18th birthday and final testing. This is the important one for Lucien is Orfano and as such lives for the day when he passes and can be adopted by one of the four houses. He hopes for the Fonteini, the house of fighters and with it will come an understanding of all the mysteries of Landfall. However there are some mysteries that are secrets even from the Orfani and for a very good reason. Full review...
A Lovely Way to Burn (Plague Times Trilogy 1) by Louise Welsh
The summer of the great heat wave is also the summer of death. Stevie thought nothing of the three establishment pillars turned snipers; the news just didn't register. Then the illness came: plague-like symptoms sweeping across the world. When Stevie's boyfriend dies it's easy to put it down to the pandemic but Stevie has a hunch and she won't stop till she's followed it, no matter what happens or who tries to stop her. Full review...
Four Sisters:The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses by Helen Rappaport
A few years ago, Helen Rappaport wrote and published Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs, a painstaking, chilling account of the final days and death of the last Tsar of Russia and his family. To a certain extent this biography is a prequel to that volume, an account of the short lives of OTMA, as they referred to themselves – the Tsar’s daughters Olga, Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia. Full review...
Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan
Polly is disconsolate. She thought she had it all, the perfect yuppie lifestyle in Plymouth. She is 32 and has worked tirelessly marketing and managing her artist boyfriend’s graphic design consultancy. Now, with the sudden economic downturn and the competitive nature of new technologies, the bank has foreclosed. Chris just wants to shut out the world and slink back to his mother's, leaving Polly bereft, homeless and confused as she struggles to start over again away from the rat race. Faced with the prospect of grungy student flat shares, she looks further afield for new affordable accommodation and finds a neglected tidal island in Cornwall connected by a causeway to the mainland. In the harbour, there is a dirty, derelict building for rent. The upstairs loft is over a disused bakery. Full review...
The Mad Sculptor by Harold Schechter
The modern proliferation of TV channels has not filled our screens with copious amounts of quality television that we can't find time to watch, but instead has given us countless channels we cannot be bothered to see. Some of these channels are packed to the gills with True Crime Documentaries that go into lurid detail about murders, kidnappings and other unsavoury business. ‘The Mad Sculptor’ by Harold Schechter is a True Crime novel, but is it a well-researched slice of nonfiction, or another avenue to glorify crime for those fans of TV Crime? Full review...
Water Music by Margie Orford
Cassie is out riding on a bridle path hardly used in the height of summer, totally deserted in winter. Her horse takes a tumble, and she goes with it, and stumbles into a tiny, plastic-wrapped child, maybe three-years old, and painfully thin, foot-soles like marble and skin blue with cold. Full review...