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Book Reviews From The Bookbag (view source)
Revision as of 08:11, 13 March 2014
, 08:11, 13 March 2014no edit summary
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{{newreview
|title=Where Are You Banana?
|author=Sofie Laguna and Craig Smith (Illustrator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Banana. It may not be the most obvious name for a dog but it’s the name of Roddy’s pet. Apparently it was Roddy’s first word, spoken, by coincidence, when the new pup arrived. A tad precocious and serendipitous as first utterances go but I’m going to let that one slip as, dog name aside, 'Where Are You, Banana?' contains some delicious observations of family life captured in both written and painted form.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1743361629</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=The Enchanted
|author=Rene Denfeld
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Death Row, in a prison somewhere in the rural US. It's an old prison too, where the modern sensors and security will never be seen, and where those waiting years for their final, final appeals – or for the closing act in their life – remain underground, in dank cells that have no mod-cons, and can easily flood when the rains raise the water table too high. It's where a man called York is seeing out his days, and whereas a female investigator is trying her hardest to get evidence that might see his sentence quashed or changed, he is saying it should be carried out forthwith. While she tries to piece together what got him there and what made him take that terminal decision, shadows of her own dark background are forced to move into sight. All this is told us by the omniscient narration of another man on Death Row, thanks to two heinous crimes…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297870491</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=The Four Seasons of Lucy Mckenzie
|author=Kirsty Murray
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=''For the first time in her life, Lucy dreaded Christmas.''
She has been sent to stay with her Great-Aunt Big, who lives in a homestead in the Australian wilderness. Her family, meanwhile, will be spending Christmas in Paris, tending to Lucy’s older sister who is in a coma following a tragic accident. Lucy is deeply worried about her big sister and understands why she has been left behind, but she is filled with trepidation at the idea of spending such a long time with her eccentric Aunt, miles away from civilization without even as much as a mobile phone signal.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1743361246</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=The Blazing World
|author=Siri Hustvedt
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='All intellectual and artistic endeavours…fare better in the mind of the crowd when the crowd knows that somewhere behind the great work or the great spoof it can locate a cock and a pair of balls.' Thus we are introduced to the unforgettable Harriet Burden – larger-than-life, six-foot-tall amazon artist – and to some of the novel's essential elements: musing on what makes intellectual products successful in a postmodern marketplace, feminist resentment of the overvaluing of male achievement, and an unapologetic, playful boldness with language.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444779648</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=Urban Outlaws
|author=Peter Jay Black
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=What skills would you need to trick the rich and powerful out of their ill-gotten gains? A posse of brilliant lawyers and accountants with elastic consciences? A cache of guns and bombs? Well, maybe, although it is very possible that all that will do is to turn you into villains as dirty as your marks. And, if you'll forgive the sudden descent into street-speak, that's not the way these five young Urban Outlaws roll.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408851415</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=The Dead Wife's Handbook
Behavioral economists (if you’ll excuse the American spelling) investigate people’s buying behaviour and consuming patterns. I guess we know about that already because supermarkets here lull us into buying three for the price of two, to come back next week for £10 off a £100, or to garner extra points on a loyalty card (Oh why can’t they just go for a cheaper price at the point of sale? Why do profits have to be in double percentage point increases year on year?). A fair bit of manipulation to ensure that a company survives is already part and parcel of our lives. If you’d asked me before I read this book, I would have lined up that sort of consumer marketing psychology alongside banking as profiteering. However … these guys are different: they really do seem to care about the plight of the underprivileged, and they come from an academic setting, rather than a commercial one.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847946747</amazonuk>
}}