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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I Want Spaghetti by Stephanie Blake
Simon likes spaghetti. In fact, he likes it so much that that's the only thing he wants to eat. Simon is also blessed with having no concerns about stating his demands, very clearly, nor any qualms about criticising any other food that might be placed in front of him. He is, as you can tell, a typical toddler! Full review...
The American Lover by Rose Tremain
Having never read a Rose Tremain book before, I was interested to start this collection of short stories. I wasn't disappointed, and it quickly became clear why she has won so many literary awards for her work. Full review...
Clare and Her Captain (Colour Conker) by Michael Morpurgo and Catherine Rayner
Clare didn't enjoy the journey down to Devon. Her parents always argued and it was usually because Mum had lost her way or got caught in a traffic jam and this time she'd done both. It was a little better when they got to Aunt Dora's house, but Aunt Dora wasn't exactly a peacemaker and tended to stick up for Dad against everybody else. The holiday improved when Clare got out for a walk on her own and discovered a stray lamb on the road. She took it to the nearest house and Mr Jones was delighted: Clare had just saved half his flock. Clare got on with the old man - and with his horse, Captain. Full review...
The Night Before Christmas by Clement C Moore and Max Marshall
Everyone knows the classic story of the night before Christmas, but as a child I never had it in a standalone book like this and, it seems, I never knew there was quite as much to the tale. If you don't already own a version, this new release is a must buy for the presentation alone. Full review...
The Undesired by Yrsa Sigurdardottir and Victoria Cribb (translator)
If you're lucky enough to go to Iceland they will tell you, even in this day and age, that the place is heavily populated with trolls. Yrsa Sigurdardottir may or may not agree with that, but she certainly peoples her world with ghosts. Here is Odinn, and to some extent his ghost – certainly there's the ghost of 'what if' around him, and the man he might have been if he hadn't abandoned the young mother of his child. Here is that very wife, who is now dead herself. Here is the spirit of failure as he takes over a job at work from someone else who had a fatal heart attack – that task, to investigate a children's care home in the 1970s to see if anything nefarious went on. And that place certainly should be haunted – already a dead child has been disposed of, and more is to come… Full review...
After You by Jojo Moyes
After writing the massively popular Me Before You, all of Jojo Moyes' readers were clamouring for more. Having been on the edge of our armchairs during the story, we all wanted to know what happened to Lou next. Would she be okay? Would she live her life with passion? Where would she go next? So the arrival of this story is a special treat, as it continues the tale of Lou, although perhaps not in the way we had imagined… Full review...
Bellebrook's Secrets by Helen Stafford
Trudy Hampstead has a plan that will support her widowed mother and twin brother unwittingly involving their landlord's son. Their landlord is local gentry and philanderer Alistair Burgoyne QC and the one person who can ensure security of tenure. Trudy thinks that Peter the local curate should step in to speak to Trudy, something he's more than happy to do since he has a secret agenda of his own. Meanwhile up at the farm the Lovestocks' marriage is coming apart at the seams, a fact that may partially threaten the peace of the village but not half as much as the anonymous random acts of violence that are about to hit Bellebrook. Full review...
Celeste Three is Missing by Chris Calder
Celeste 3 is the first successful commercial passenger carrying space/aircraft to go beyond the Earth's atmosphere for any length of time. This advance in travel didn't come easily as the two previous prototypes demonstrated and so there's much interest as the date of each of its flights approaches. Two people are paying closer attention than the rest of the world's population due to the presence of a certain passenger as much as the vehicle itself. One of the high rollers will be the ruthless Russian billionaire Karenkov. Gregory Topozian and Jack Smith have seen friends and colleagues die at his whim so they have a bone to pick and an ambitious way to do it… as long as nothing and no one gets in the way. Full review...
Hidden Depths by Ann Cleeves
Life hadn't been easy for Julie Armstrong, left on her own with two children. Her son Luke 'had his difficulties' too, probably best summarised as a learning disorder, and he absorbed a lot of Julie's time. She felt guilty that she neglected her daughter Laura who was bright, but rather withdrawn: being Luke's sister had never been easy and keeping herself to herself was the best way of dealing with the jibes about what he'd done now. There weren't many opportunities for Julie to get out without the kids and the chance of a night out with her girlfriends had been too good to pass up, but when she came home, perhaps a little drunk and high from meeting up with a man she felt attracted to, she found Luke dead in a flower-strewn bath full of water. He'd been strangled. Full review...
The November Criminals by Sam Munson
Addison Schacht is a high school senior (that's sixth form if you're British) in Washington DC and a bit of a classics nerd. His favourite book is Virgil's Aeineid - he owns three copies and reads from one of them every single day. He has applied to the University of Chicago, where he wants to study classics. So far, so model pupil, right? The thing is, Addison is also a consistent truant and runs his own business - selling drugs to his peers. Hmm! Full review...
Trust by Mike Bullen
Greg and Amanda are happy. Unmarried, but together thirteen years and with two young daughters, they are very much in love. Dan and Sarah aren't so fortunate. Their marriage is going through the motions, and they're staying together for the sake of their troubled teenage son. Following a business conference away from home, one bad decision sends a happy couple into turmoil, and turns an unhappy couple into love's young dream. As secrets and betrayals threaten to send both relationships out of control, there's only one thing that can keep everything from falling apart: Trust Full review...
Liquidator by Andy Mulligan
Ladies and gentlemen, please turn off your phones and suspend your disbelief as you enter the crazy, exciting and thoroughly silly world of the new book by the fantabulous Andy Mulligan. You will encounter ruthless villains, non-stop danger, at least one near-death experience and a rather jolly lorry driver. Where does all this happen, you ask? In the mountain-top fastness of some evil spy? In the secret laboratory of a crazed wizard? Nope – somewhere way, way more dangerous. Work experience. Full review...
Doctor Who: The Dangerous Book of Monsters by Justin Richards and Dan Green
It's imperative you keep up with The Doctor, in both senses – meaning in case the first thing he tells you to do is Run! and in the sense of following all his various adventures and maintaining knowledge of what's what and who he's faced, enemy-wise. One great way to be enemy wise is to peruse this book, which really is a great present for the young fan – and of course a life-saving manual for when you yourself find sharks in the fog, gas-mask wearing boys sans their mothers or indeed gigantic Cyberking dreadnought spacecraft. Honestly, why this is classed as a fiction title I have no idea… Full review...
Puppy Love (Dork Diaries) by Rachel Renee Russell
Things have changed drastically in the world of Nikki Maxwell. Her arch nemesis has suddenly upped sticks and moved school – well, the posher place will only suit her well. Nikki now has a sort of empty feeling, though – nobody is there to make her feel pestered, let down, het up and stressed. Although something is about to do just that and more – the discovery, outside the sanctuary her crush volunteers at, of an abandoned mother dog with her seven puppies. Looking after them until the place even has space for the new arrivals is going to fill her world for the next few days – and the adventure is going to be just as readable as all the other books in this series. Full review...
Life Below Stairs: True Lives of Edwardian Servants by Alison Maloney
Life in Edwardian times is currently a popular subject, thanks in no small part to that period drama currently showing its final series on ITV. Life Below Stairs examines the subject in greater detail, looking at documents and memoirs from the time to discover what life was really like for those in service. We learn about the strict hierarchy in the household and the duties expected of each individual. We see how much each member of staff was paid and how workers were hired (and in many cases, fired) from their positions. Welcome to a slice of Edwardian life, served up with a delicious mix of period illustrations and newspaper clippings Full review...
A Boy Called Christmas by Matt Haig
Have you ever wondered what Father Christmas was like as boy? How he came to live in the Far North surrounded by elves? Where the idea for giving presents came from? Why he wears a red hat? If you're interested in any of these questions, then 'A Boy Called Christmas' is the perfect book for you. Full review...
The Winter Place by Alexander Yates
Axel and Tess live in rural New York state with a father obsessed with mediaeval reconstructions. They have a knight for a father! This eccentricity is both entertaining and a good thing - because Sam is the only parental figure in their lives. Axel and Tess's mother died when Axel was born. Tess is just moving into oppositional adolescence. She and Sam enjoy sparring over the care of Axel, who has inherited a rare form of muscular dystrophy from his late mother. Axel is, well, an individual child, currently haunted by a mischievous wheelchair only he can see. The pesky thing follows him everywhere. Full review...
Back to the Future: The Ultimate Visual History by Michael Klastorin and Randal Atamaniuk
Well, thankfully I have never had to sit through Jaws 19. Of all the perks invented for the heady days of October 2015 by the middle film in the Back to the Future trilogy, that was one of the least inviting. I've never actually seen that middle film, either – really liked the original and still do, had the middle one pass me by totally, then saw the third so often as a cinema steward (shows my age!) I was word perfect on the script. The threesome is one of a most wholesome kind – the restoration of family values through grabbing hold of your own destiny by the horns, the application of science to save the day over brawns and shooting people up, the habitually dung-filled comeuppance of the baddies throughout time – it's no wonder that the trilogy is much loved. And as it's the most pictorial and detailed guide to their creation on paper imaginable, this volume will follow it into many hearts. Full review...
The Soul of Discretion (Simon Serrailler) by Susan Hill
The story begins with hints: an old lady hears children screaming in the middle of the night, sees children being bundled away from a property she thought was uninhabited. A teacher is horrified by a drawing from a child which suggests that she is aware of brutal sexual activity. For Simon Serrailler the knowledge had come more directly: he was approached to go undercover in prison with the aim of getting close to Will Fearnley, a convicted paedophile who had consistently refused to divulge any information about his contacts. He was currently in a therapy centre and is was here that DCS Serrailer went as Johno Miles, also a convicted paedophile. Full review...
Splinter the Silence by Val McDermid
I should probably be ashamed to say that I only know Val McDermid's Tony Hill series from the TV adaption Wire in the Blood. And I'm afraid to say that if the latest offering is par for the series, then I'll remain content with that. Full review...
QI: The Third Book of General Ignorance by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, James Harkin and Andrew Hunter Murray
Well done, Hartlepool. You didn't put on trial and kill a shipwrecked monkey thinking it a Napoleonic spy – any more than the several other places thusly accused ever did. Well done, Italy, for making the ciabatta such a global phenomenon it seems like a traditional foodstuff, even if it was invented in 1982. And well done to that famous ice hockey player, Charles Darwin – who was probably playing it, seeing as it was a British invention, long before the Canadians ever realised they might be good at it. Yes, for a book that spends a lot of its time saying 'this didn’t happen,' 'hoojamaflip didn't do this,' and 'that was never thus', it's one that's incredibly easy to be most positive about. Full review...
Aerodynamics of biscuits by Clare Helen Walsh and Sophia Touliatou
Oliver knows he shouldn't be skulking, sneaking and creeping around in the middle of the night. But even good little boys sometimes do things they shouldn't when they're hungry. And it's just as well he does. Without Oliver, the pirate mice wouldn't be able to use the biscuits they've stolen to build an aerodynamic rocket to take them to the moon. And without Oliver they would still be stranded on the cheesy moon unable to get home. Full review...
The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson
This is the inaugural volume of a new series of Shakespeare retellings from Hogarth Press. Still to come: Margaret Atwood on The Tempest, Howard Jacobson on The Merchant of Venice and Anne Tyler on The Taming of the Shrew, among others. How is this first book? It's pretty good as Winterson novels go, incorporating Shakespearean themes of time, deception and adoption and turning bears and statues into metaphors while remaining loyal to the essence of the plot. Yet two crucial elements of the play don't make sense in a modern setting, and in the end I felt this added nothing to my enjoyment of the original. Full review...
Stitches in Time: The Story of the Clothes We Wear by Lucy Adlington
Stitches in Time is a lively history of clothing. Riffling through the wardrobes of years gone by, costume historian Lucy Adlington reveals the stories underneath the clothes we wear in this tour of the history of fashion, ranging from ancient times to the present day. With beautiful illustrations and full colour photographs, Stitches in Time is a reminder of how the way we dress is inextricably bound up with considerations of aesthetics, sex, gender, class and lifestyle – and offers the reader the chance to appreciate the extraordinary qualities of the clothing we wear, and the rich history it has led. Full review...