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 Luck Uglies by Paul Durham
It's hard not to be clumsy when you have to wear the big old boots you father left behind when he disappeared years ago – even if you do stuff them with fresh straw every day. But that doesn't stop eleven-year-old Rye O'Chanter and her two friends from getting up to all manner of mischief, from 'borrowing' a forbidden text from the Angry Poet to sneaking out at night to see the Black Moon festivities. Full review...
Any Other Mouth by Anneliese Mackintosh
With a title like Any Other Mouth, you know from the outset that this is, shall we say, a rather niche book. It’s not all about orifices, though. Partially autobiographical, this is the messy, ludicrous, wildly entertaining story of a girl who’s just a little bit different. Ok, make that a lot different. Full review...
A Kill in the Morning by Graeme Shimmin
The Nazis are amongst the most infamous group that has ever walked the planet. They may have been evil, but there was something pantomime about them that has made them the perfect foil for countless cheesy action films and pulp fiction. To enjoy these you have to disengage yourself from the history and see the Nazis of fiction as separate from those of real life. Can I enjoy a book like A Kill in the Morning set in an alternative 1950s were the Nazis have taken over mainland Europe and are building an ultimate weapon? Can a maverick secret agent take out SS Commander Reinhard Heydrich and change the tide of history? Full review...
Elephant by Suzi Eszterhas
Elephant is part of the wonderful Eye on the Wild series by award-winning wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas. The book follows the journey of a young bull elephant calf from birth through adulthood. The vivid full-page photographs show heartwarming snapshots of life in the herd; a purely matriarchal society where strong females form a close family bond and work hard rearing and protecting their young. Full review...
The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai
The first thing you'll notice about this novel is that, like a crazy house, it's upside-down. That is: it opens in 1999, that near-contemporary storyline taking up about half the text; follows it with sections set in 1955 and 1929; and finishes with a 'prologue' set in 1900. The second thing to jump out is that this is a ghost story – or is it? The first line is both declaration and qualification: 'For a ghost story, the tale of Violet Saville Devohr was vague and underwhelming.' Full review...
Shimmer by Paula Weston
Gaby is still struggling to come to terms with the many major revelations that have been thrown at her in the past few days - not least that the brother she's believed dead for a year is actually alive. Oh, and they're both Rephaim, half-Angel children of the Fallen - angels that fell from grace after seducing human women. Full review...
That's What Makes a Hippopotamus Smile! by Sean Taylor and Laurent Cardon
All hippopotamuses want to do is play in the bath and eat salady things. If you follow these instructions then any hippopotamus who turns up at your house will be thrilled to call you their friend; just don't forget to open the door very w i d e when they arrive, otherwise they'll never get in! Full review...
Tiger by Suzi Eszterhas
Tiger is a simply stunning picture book following the lives of a tiger family from birth to adulthood. Each page is filled with enchanting pictures of the tigers in the wild, taken by award-winning photographer Suzi Eszterhas. Full review...
My Outdoor Life by Ray Mears
Sometimes, a seemingly insignificant incident in one's youth can have far-reaching and profound consequences. Life is punctuated with pivotal moments that can completely alter a course of events. Ray Mears recalls such an incident when aged six, he opened an encyclopaedia and saw a picture of cavemen for the first time. A few months later, the same volume was sitting on the edge his desk, when suddenly, it started to slide. Mears reached out to grab it... Full review...
Better Homes and Hauntings by Molly Harper
When Nina Linden arrives on Deacon Whitney's private island, it's a chance for her to escape the difficulties of her past and start rebuilding her failing landscaping business. If she can do a good job here, it will open all sorts of doors to the upper class markets, and on a private island, surely her horrible ex can't find ways to sabotage her, right? Full review...
Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For by Frank Miller
Ava. Damn. With that repeated refrain we're forcibly given Dwight's viewpoint and made to agree with it. Ava is quite a woman. She was Dwight's, but now she's not, and he's forced to ignore his photojournalism career in favour of his night-time job of photographing evidence for adultery cases, and to struggle to stay away from the fags and off the booze. But now it's all going to be much harder, for Ava has come back. She's stifled in a loveless, violent marriage, trapped in a gated villa with her husband and his man mountain of a bodyguard, and only Dwight has the flutter in her heart and the iron in his fist and gut to make things right for her. Damn Ava? You bet he's going to… Full review...
Minty by Christina Banach
Fourteen-year-old twins Minty and Jess are barely ever parted, until a fateful trip to the coast ends in tragedy. Minty tries to rescue her dog but is soon fighting for her life. Full review...
Katie's Picture Show by James Mayhew
Can there be a better way of bringing the world of art and the classic masterpieces alive for children than the charming Katie series? This particular story is the one that started it all twenty five years ago and this celebratory issue has been beautifully re-illustrated by James Mayhew throughout and is also in a slightly larger format too. As the tiny figure of Katie stands dwarfed on the steps of the grand National Gallery with her Grandma, her happy attitude and cheerful disregard for rules such as Please do not touch teaches children not to be afraid of art and gently encourages a curious attitude not only to paintings but to all their surroundings. The formal atmosphere of an art gallery is made more engaging and child friendly as the paintings come to life with a friendly tiger, tea and cakes and a new playmate for Katie. Full review...
Jam Tomorrow by Lorraine Jenkin
Joss Jeffries is a farmer. Not a farmer's wife and general help on the farm but the one who has to get out there and make it work. Her husband departed a while ago leaving her with their young son and a mountain of debt, so what she needs is money coming in, and preferably as quickly as possible. She and her father, Mick, come up with what seems like a good idea: walking holidays in the magical mid-Wales countryside. It looks to be quite a sound plan too. They'll take well-paying, decent people on great walks and let them experience the joy of camping and living close to nature. Only... Full review...
Sex and Violence by Carrie Mesrobian
Seventeen-year-old Evan is a player who, when he moves to a new town, has always found it easy to find a girl to have sex with. Then he ends up in the wrong place, with the wrong girl, at the wrong time, and suffers a brutal assault. Retreating to a quiet community in Minnesota with his father, he meets many new people, including a girl who may be there for more than 'just' sex. But can he recover from the trauma he's suffered? Full review...
Head Over Heart by Colette Victor
Like many other British thirteen-year-olds, Zeyneb is struggling with her feelings as she grows up, and with juggling her friends and family. However, she has an extra dilemma - she's a Muslim girl who's attracted to a non-Muslim boy whom her family would never approve of. Additionally, she needs to decide whether to wear a headscarf or not. What should she do? Full review...
A Big Day for Migs by Jo Hodgkinson
It's summer which means new school uniforms are in the shops, new stationery is on every shelf, and for those starting school for the first time, there's a wealth of Starting school books to ease the transition. This is a fun new addition to the shelves that ticks all the boxes: colourful, inventive, sweet and, best of all, told in rhyme. I love rhyme. Full review...
The Flying Bath by Julia Donaldson and David Roberts
It’s long been accepted that when you go to school and your parents are at work, your toys come alive and have adventures until you return. EVERYBODY knows that. But have you ever thought about the other things in your house and whether they have a second life? Here’s a hint: they DO. Welcome to the Flying Bath. Full review...
Breaking Light by Karin Altenberg
Gabriel Askew retires to the village of Mortford, the place in which he grew up and from where childhood ghosts haunt him to this day. It’s a conscious decision: Gabe, ostracised as a child due to his hair lip, returns to face these demons that have controlled his life and forced him to do the unthinkable but now he wants peace… if it's not too late. Full review...
Lost Luggage by Jordi Punti
There are lots of things you wonder when you grow up with just one parent, but whether you also have a bunch of half-siblings, all with the same name as you, all dotted around the continent, is not normally high on the list. Gabriel Delacruz has 4 boys by 4 different women in 4 parts of Europe. None of them know of the others’ existence but when Gabriel disappears, his incredulous life is uncovered and Christof, Christophe, Christopher and Cristofol meet. Full review...
Train That Carried The Girl: 2 (Riccarton Junction) by W Scott Beaven
A few years have passed since we last met Kikarin, the then teenager growing up in the wilds of the Scottish borders surrounded by some pretty wild people. Her parents have gone back to live in Japan while her brother has fled abroad as a result of the family's near fatal brush with the criminal underworld. This leaves Kiri to continue her life with her friends Ainslie and Melanie filling the void. Although disappointed to have missed out on her honours degree in archaeology, Kiri finds alternative employment selling double glazing for commercial premises. Some things change but Kiri is still scarred by the past. She wants to settle down but will this past let her? Full review...
50 Things You Should Know About The First World War by Jim Eldridge
It's a non-fiction book certainly for the primary school audience, and as a result is fully pictorial and not terribly wordy. The '50 Things' idea is a hook to draw one in, and that leads to fifty more salient paragraphs being given us in bold print, mostly but not all given a double-page spread. But there are other boxed-out paragraphs, timelines, factoids written up the edge of the page, illuminating captions and more, so there is certainly a welter of detail. Said diversity of detail can be delivered at times in awkward fashion – even with three paragraphs at most per page it can still be a test to read them in the right order – but it does mean this book covers the gamut of the War, pretty much in chronological order, and more or less in perfectly-judged depth. Full review...
ZOM-B Clans by Darren Shan
WARNING! If you haven't read the first book in this series, STOP READING NOW! NOW! Spoilers ahoy!
Go on. Run along. Full review...
Harry's Last Stand by Harry Leslie Smith
RAF veteran Harry Leslie Smith rose to prominence last year with a famous Guardian article 'This year, I will wear a poppy for the last time' about the way in which the remembrance of those who died in the great wars has been co-opted to justify today’s military conflicts. Here, he tackles themes of poverty, political corruption, unemployment, and a lack of hope felt by so many people today. Full review...
A Corner of Paradise: A love story (with the usual reservations) by Brian Thompson
In the early seventies Brian Thompson met Elizabeth North, both of them part of failing marriages which would have died without any intervention on their parts. They became friends, they fell in love but they never felt the need to marry and would be together until Liz's death in 2010 at the age of seventy eight. Both are authors - Thompson would maintain that North was the better writer - and North would perhaps have said that she should have made that clear. A Corner of Paradise tells the story - not of the homes they lived in - but of the joy of their relationship. Full review...
Grace: Her Lives - Her Loves: The startling royal exposé by Robert Lacey
Twenty-five years before another so-called fairytale royal romance which turned out to be anything but, one of America’s most beloved screen goddesses crossed the Atlantic and married into the principality of Monaco. The ceremony in 1956 was hailed as the wedding of the year, but like the later and similar event, it was not the happiest of unions. Full review...
The Spring of Kasper Meier by Ben Fergusson
Germany may be defeated as the embers of World War II grow cold but Kasper Meier is making the most of it. His trade in black market goods and casual private investigation work augment the meagre rations for him and his dying father. When a woman asks him to find a missing British airman he refuses – it's not really his line. She blackmails Kasper and still he refuses but then the note arrives: This is bigger than you. You don't have a choice. Queers still die in Berlin. Find the pilot. It seems that he's been seen with another man and now he has a decision to make that will either cost or save his life. Full review...
Decay: 2 (Tesla) by Mark Lingane
The city has been rebuilt for war. The waves of cyborg attacks are just the beginning – what follows is more devastating. Not only that but also the flood of refugees surging in daily is as much of a problem as a resource. Actually in one or two cases the word 'problem' is a bit of an understatement. In the middle of this hell Seb and Melanie are doing their best to fight and survive, although survival doesn't look like an option once they realise they have to go into the enemy's hive and bring the battle to the cyborgs. Full review...
Don't Even Think About It by Sarah Mlynowski
Something weird happens after 10B get their flu shots - they develop telepathy. There are good points - they know what other people think of them, they can cheat on tests, and they have the upper hand in conversations with others. But there are some drawbacks as well - not only do they no longer have any secrets from each other, but also, knowing what other people think of them can be a two-edged sword! High school is hard enough to survive when you're normal - will being an Espie make it even more difficult? Full review...
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Ove (pronounced 'Oo-veh') is a man of principle who tries to do the right thing, ensure the no parking area remains so, is a good Swedish citizen and tries to be civil to his neighbours (even the foreign ones). However he comes over as a total grump. He was even ousted from his position as Chairman of the Residents Association by a vicious coup. Indeed, he's the sort of person who, when life gives him lemons, finds that they're rotting in the middle. There's so much more to his story than that though; a story that started a long time ago. Full review...