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 Dyslexic Hearts Club by Hanneke Hendrix and David Doherty (translator)
I recently reviewed a novel by another Scandinavian novelist, Helle Helle, This Should be Written in the Present Tense, and I expected this novel by Hanneke Hendrix to be very similar. It wasn't. That's not totally a bad thing – many people will enjoy the fast-paced, dialogue driven novel that The Dyslexic Hearts Club is. It just wasn't exactly what I was expecting. Full review...
Blackheath by Adam Baron
Househusband James is happy in Blackheath. He's started doing stand-up again so that he too has an achievement in his life to balance wife Alice's award winning poetry. Children Ida and Dominic are doing well so all is great. Elsewhere in the area Amelia is equally happy with her actor husband Richard, her own career and children Niamh and teenage Michael. Sometimes happiness isn't enough though and, as the worlds of the two families start to mingle, things start changing for each of them. Full review...
Gate of the Dead (Master of War) by David Gilman
Tuscany 1358: A dying man brings an enigmatic message to Thomas Blackstone, the exiled English archer and current mercenary leader. It appears to be a royal command to return home but is it an invitation to his own death? Thomas can't take the risk of ignoring it, especially since his life is in just as much danger where he is. It seems that he's more valuable dead than alive in many countries; it's just a case of deducing the paymaster – or paymasters - behind the assassination attempts before he runs out of time. Full review...
Grey Island Red Boat by Ian Beck
Princess Opal lived with her father, the king, on the Island of Ashes. It was a grey island, set in a grey sea and Opal lived in a grey castle surrounded by a cold grey moat. The gardens were grey and so were the trees and flowers. Princess Opal even sat on a grey granite throne in a grey granite room - and she wished that her life could be different. She couldn't help but think that something was missing. Full review...
The Nature Explorer's Scrapbook by Caz Buckingham and Andrea Pinnington
An activity book, but not as you know it is what it says on the back cover - and I have to agree. Here at Bookbag we tend to avoid 'activity books' as they usually have soft covers, lots of stickers and they're the sort of thing you pick up at the supermarket checkout in the hope that it will buy you an hour or two's peace in the school holidays. The Nature Explorer's Handbook is a different beast altogether. It's part album in which you're going to collect and store your own finds, part explanation of the best practices of how you should go about this and part nature guide. It's a substantial hardback book with an elastic band to keep it shut - as it's really going to get quite bulky when your collection grows. Production values for the book are high - this really is something which will be treasured for years. Full review...
Blue Moon by Jenny Oldfield
Anna thought that life was just about perfect. She was home-schooled for much of the time, but spent quite a lot of time riding her horse, Blue Moon, with her friend Lee and his horse, Stormy. There was even a secret meadow which the two twelve-year olds used to visit. Then one evening, Anna dashed in late for supper at the ranch and realised that something was wrong - badly wrong. Anna's mother had a tumour in her stomach which would require surgery. As if that wasn't bad enough, her father was going to have to sell some of the horses to pay for the surgery. Worried as she was about her mother there was one thought uppermost in Anna's mind: the best-trained horse on the ranch - and the one that was worth the most money - was Blue Moon. Anna could not bear the thought of losing the animal who had known her since she was two years old. She and Lee came up with a plan. Full review...
My First Mr Men 123 by Roger Hargreaves
As first books go, board books are good because they withstand a bit of biting, a bit of dribbling, a bit of roughness induced by not quite there yet hand-eye coordination. And as topics go, counting is great when you're trying to teach the skill and just need repetition. Plus it doesn't require the focus of attention that a proper story might. So a board book for counting? Perfect. Full review...
Marooned in the Arctic by Peggy Caravantes
Misogynists are manmade. And if anyone was in a position to hate men and the lot they put on their shoulders, it was Ava Blackjack. Her surname spoke of an abusive man she had a son by, but it was her time with four other men that made for one of the last century's more remarkable stories. An Inuit native, but one brought up in a city and with English lessons, she was invited on an excursion alongside many other 'Eskimo' and four intrepid Westerners, to the uninhabited Wrangel Island, perched off the northern Siberian coast. They were there just to stick a flag in it and call it British, even if they were pretty much fully American and Canadian, and the chap whose ideas these all were bore an Icelandic name; she was along to provide native expertise, especially waterproof fur clothing. And that was it – none of her kin joined her, leaving her in one tent and four men in another, in one of the world's most remote and inhospitable places. And that was just the start of her worries… Full review...
The Murdered Banker by Augusto De Angelis and Jill Foulston (translator)
Inspector De Vincenzi is working against the clock. A body was found in his old school-friend Giannetto Aurigi's apartment in the early hours of this morning and the investigating magistrate wants to take over as quickly as possible. The trouble is, Aurigi owed the dead man money, has been acting strangely, and isn't trying to defend himself. Unless De Vincenzi finds strong evidence to the contrary today, the investigating magistrate will see it as an open and shut case, and that will be the end of Aurigi. But none of the evidence seems to add up. Full review...
Where Love Begins by Judith Hermann
Stella lives an ordinary life in a small town in Germany. While her young daughter is at kindergarten, she works as a domiciliary nurse. After school and at the weekend she is for all intents and purposes a single mother, for her husband Jason works away a lot. We don't know if she is happy, per se, but she doesn't seem unhappy. Full review...
The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
Think of iconic novels, and "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" will be near the top of your list. From the rabbit hole to the Mad Hatter's tea party and the Queen's cricket ground, Lewis Carroll's imagination has established itself firmly in Western cultural heritage: with a parade of characters ranging from the weird to the wonderful and a constant play with logic and language, Carroll's masterpiece has earned its place among classics. Full review...
Fortunes of France 3: Heretic Dawn by Robert Merle and T Jefferson Kline (translator)
France 1568: Having persuaded his father Jean that it's safe for him to return to his studies, Pierre de Siorac goes back to Montpellier. He doesn’t stay there long though as Jean has a mission for him that will take him into the royal court in Paris. The fighting between the Medici-led Catholics and the Huguenots has quietened down but, despite sending his son into the vipers' nest, he's reluctant to consider the Peace of St Germain as being the end of the conflict. History will prove his suspicions correct as we approach the St Bartholomew Massacre of the Huguenots which occurs… in Paris. Full review...
Strawberry Crush by Jean Ure
Mattie has sometimes felt that she has her work cut out with her cousin Maya. Maya's mum and Mattie's mum are twins and they live around the corner from each other, but Maya's mum is, well, just a bit fragile and Uncle Kevin, her dad, is absent at the moment and no one knows where he is. All that would be enough to cope with, but Maya has crushes. Well, crushes doesn't do what happens justice: it really amounts to obsession and a new one starts when Maya falls off her bike (not unusual) and is 'rescued' by Jake Harper, the school heart throb. What deeply worries Mattie is that Maya is twelve and Jake is eighteen and there are occasions, as Mattie listens to Maya, when she wonders if something really is going on. Or is it all in Maya's over-active imagination? What should Mattie do? Full review...
Book of Lies by Teri Terry
As teenage fiction Book of Lies has all the usual themes -- confused sense of identity, relationship troubles, difficult family backgrounds... But it also has another element: the supernatural. The story starts when identical twin girls (the charmingly named Piper and Quinn) are reunited as teenagers, having been separated at birth. We follow their journey as they discover each other and reveal the complexities of their shared family, their terrifying dreams and sinister non-human abilities. As with all good supernatural stories, there are hints of witchcraft, hounds of death and family curses. Full review...
The Girl on the Liar's Throne by Den Patrick
Lucien doesn’t want to declare war on Landfall and its Silent Queen, Anea, whom he grew up with as an Orfano. She runs a dictatorship of militant suppression and suffering which is rather unlike her. Unbeknown to Lucien, the throne of Landfall is occupied by Eris, an imposter and puppet used by those with far fewer scruples. Anea herself is imprisoned in the palace oubliette surrounded by Myrmidon, a half-human army created by Erebus. There's little chance of her escaping or getting very far if she did. However, for Anea 'little chance' is a challenge, not a preventative. Full review...
Quick Quack Quentin by Kes Gray and Jim Field
Quentin is a very downhearted duck because his quack is too quick. In fact all he can manage is a Quck. This will never do, so Quentin visits his local doctor to see if there is anything he can give him to make things better. Sadly, although the Doctor is swiftly able to diagnose Quentin's problem, he cannot provide what he needs. Quentin really needs an A so waddles off on search of one. On his journey he visits a succession of animals who, whilst being sympathetic to his plight and helpful in their own way, only manage to subtly change his problem rather than solve it. Therefore, poor Quentin's quest for the missing vowel continues. Full review...
Thanks for the Trouble by Tommy Wallach
Parker hasn't spoken a single, solitary word for the last five years. He hasn't started applying for college yet, either. Not that he'd likely get in: his grades are rubbish and he spends as much time skipping school as he does attending class. He has also developed a petty theft habit, which he indulges in well-heeled hotels. Oh dear, I hear you saying. It's not as though there aren't reasons for Parker's behaviour, there are, but reasons don't help much. Full review...
The Aliens are Coming by Ben Miller
Next time that you are away from the towns and cities, wait until it gets dark and then look into the night sky. If you are lucky enough for it not to be raining, you will likely see hundreds of stars in the sky. Each one of these could be a Sun just like our own and each of these Suns could have planets orbiting it. Now times this number a million fold and you can start to fathom the number of stars and planets out there – surely the human race is not a complete fluke and there are aliens out there? Full review...
13 Minutes by Sarah Pinborough
If you think about it, you can count several things in 13s. It probably took me 13 months to find a book more emotionally satisfying than this author's previous release, The Death House. It probably took me 13 seconds to accept by email the chance to read this title. You can almost hear Andy Warhol changing his adage to '13 minutes of fame', considering that the Internet he would never have known about just makes fame even faster to achieve than ever, and one of those social media starlets – as far as the hive of Brackston Community School is concerned – Natasha Howland, was clinically dead for 13 minutes, before she was fished out of a frozen river one pre-dawn January morning. This utterly dramatic teen read is concerned with the fight for her to work out why she was in that river, although it's mostly taken from the point of view of a girl on the edge of her circle, Becca. Full review...
We Are Not FROGS! by Michael Morpurgo and Sam Usher
After the storm the frogs and the toads all came out onto the lawn to play long jump. This was the frogs' choice as they could jump further and the toads just wanted an easy life. But - through a series of unfortunate incidents involving lorries, dogs, children, a cart and an ice cream container, first the toads ended up in the ice cream container and after they sold the frogs down the river in exchange for being put into a muddy ditch, the frogs - all twenty two of them - were in the same prison and it was only thanks to Mutt the dog that they escaped. Full review...
Man of Good Hope by Jonny Steinberg
A Man of Good Hope is the remarkable biography of Asad Abdullahi. It tells the story of a Somalian boy abandoned at eight years of age and his journey to adulthood. It is also a testament to the human spirit and its capacity to survive. Epic in its scope it covers a journey that stretches the length of the continent of Africa. In a time when the mass migration of people has never been, more in focus it tells the story of what it really means to be a refugee by someone who has experienced it all his life. Full review...
Ray Davies: A Complicated Life by Johnny Rogan
Most of Britain's most popular and successful songwriters of the last 150 years, from Gilbert and Sullivan and Lennon and McCartney, to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice and Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb, have been partnerships. The only solo writer in the same league is Ray Davies, front man of The Kinks from their formation in 1963 to their final performance in 1994. While this mighty tome is partly an account of the group's tortuous thirty-year history, it is also first and foremost, as the title says, a biography of Davies himself. Through interviews with the Davies brothers, Ray and his younger brother Dave, the group's guitarist and only other constant member of the line-up, other group members, managers, friends and associates, Rogan has given us as complete a book of the man as we are ever likely to get. Full review...
Beloved Poison by E S Thomson
St Savior's is a crumbling infirmary – its walls stuffed with ambition, jealousy and hatred. Six tiny coffins, each containing dried flowers and mouldering rags, are uncovered inside the decaying chapel. A silent outsider, with secrets of her own to hide, is determined to discover the truth. And in a trail that leads from the bloody worlds of dissecting table and operating theatre, through to the squalor of Newgate Prison and its gallows, Jem Flockhart faces a ruthless adversary. As the destruction of St Savior's looms, the dead are unearthed, the living are forced into impossible decisions – and murder is the price for secrets to be kept… Full review...
Boundless: Adventures in the Northwest Passage by Kathleen Winter
Luck has a lot to do with this world. It was probably luck that let Kathleen Winter fill the post of unofficial writer-in-residence on a ship coursing through the Northwest Passage. It was doubtless luck that someone had told her to be ready and packed to accept any invite life might give you, only days beforehand. Some fortune meant she had grown up in Newfoundland, and so knew the weather, conditions and liminal locations and wildlife she might encounter. It's bad luck that between when she travelled, in 2010, and filled her pages with talk of Sir John Franklin's lost boats and lost bones, and 2016, when I read this paperback version of the results, his prime ship has been found (if not what people allege will be revealed). It's vitally fortuitous, however, that someone with her writing nous was able to travel the waters before something else, much more permanent, changed – the heinous climate change problems that are certainly upsetting the world up there. Full review...
Lilith: Eden's Planetary Princess (The Michael Archives Book 1) by C E Robinson
35,000 years ago a war in heaven bleeds onto the planet Eden. King Joshua's angels are being harvested, their essence drained off and their remaining bodies no good for anything apart from a euthanasia; a fate from which they can't be reincarnated. From this good essence is created evil Nephilim, creatures at the bidding of Satan's Overlords. Out of this battle between good and evil a planetary princess arises and this first book in the Michael Archives records her journey: the journey of Lilith from ordinary to extraordinary. Full review...
Afterlight by Rebecca Lim
A freak motorbike accident that claims the life of your parents is really all it takes to make your world fall apart. You might hope that a new beginning in a different high school is going to jumpstart your life; that a chance to reinvent yourself as just Sophie Teague, rather than Sophie-The-One-Whose-Parents-Died might just be all you need to get by. But before Sophie gets the chance to find out, she is visited by Eve. Eve isn’t like other girls. She is beautiful and mesmerizing and Eve needs Sophie to be her go-to girl. Because Eve can’t do much for herself since she died. Eve is a ghost and dealing with the dead who have unfinished business could be the biggest challenge of Sophie’s life. Full review...
Beep Beep Beep Time for Sleep by Claire Freedman and Richard Smythe
Bedtime books are a great way of winding a toddler down before they go to sleep, but haven't they all been done before? Coming up with something a little different that encourages a child to nod off is not always easy and new ideas can be a little bizarre when you think about it. Do bulldozers really need to doze off at the end of the night? At least we will have fun listening to all the machinery as it goes off to bed. Full review...
Wilfred the (Un)Wise by Cas Lester
Back in Ye Olden Days young Wilfred lands himself a dream apprenticeship training – learning how to be a wizard under the instruction of Wincewart the Withering, Castle Mage and Soothsayer of Wallop in the Wold. But learning magik isn't easy and things can go drastically and hilariously wrong – like accidentally transporting himself one thousand years into the future, where he meets a girl called Bel who loves doing magic tricks herself. Full review...
One Life: My Mother's Story by Kate Grenville
This memoir could so easily have become a sentimental tribute to Grenville's mother. But somehow, the author has managed to make it so much more than that. Full review...