Difference between revisions of "Book Reviews From The Bookbag"
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| + | |summary=Meet Tyke Tiler. I first did so a very long time ago – I might even have my copy of the original paperback, with its ending-spoiling cover artwork, as one of the few books I carried over from those days. Tyke is a schoolchild in the last year before big school, and is permanently in trouble, partly due to hanging round with Danny Price. It seems wherever Danny unfortunately leads, Tyke follows – whether it's digging sheep bones out the town weir system, or handling stolen goods when Danny nicks a high-value note from one of the teacher's purses. How is the term going to end, when everything Danny does seems to reflect badly on Tyke? | ||
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|summary=Pig and Hen decide to play hide-and-seek and whilst Pig counts to ten, Hen goes off to hide. Pig thinks that she's found Hen straight away when she spots a yellow beak behind the gate, but when we lift the gate flap we discover that the yellow beak belongs to Blackbird, who happily joins in the hunt for Hen. Could that be Hen hiding in a tent? There's a long brown ear peeping out from behind the flap, but when it's lifted, we discover Rabbit, who joins the two hunters. She was having a drink when she was found, but she brings her mug along with her. Before Hen is eventually found we've collected quite a few seekers! | |summary=Pig and Hen decide to play hide-and-seek and whilst Pig counts to ten, Hen goes off to hide. Pig thinks that she's found Hen straight away when she spots a yellow beak behind the gate, but when we lift the gate flap we discover that the yellow beak belongs to Blackbird, who happily joins in the hunt for Hen. Could that be Hen hiding in a tent? There's a long brown ear peeping out from behind the flap, but when it's lifted, we discover Rabbit, who joins the two hunters. She was having a drink when she was found, but she brings her mug along with her. Before Hen is eventually found we've collected quite a few seekers! | ||
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Revision as of 08:02, 31 December 2014
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.
There are currently 16,114 reviews at TheBookbag.
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The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler by Gene Kemp
Meet Tyke Tiler. I first did so a very long time ago – I might even have my copy of the original paperback, with its ending-spoiling cover artwork, as one of the few books I carried over from those days. Tyke is a schoolchild in the last year before big school, and is permanently in trouble, partly due to hanging round with Danny Price. It seems wherever Danny unfortunately leads, Tyke follows – whether it's digging sheep bones out the town weir system, or handling stolen goods when Danny nicks a high-value note from one of the teacher's purses. How is the term going to end, when everything Danny does seems to reflect badly on Tyke? Full review...
Stella by Helen Eve
What do you get when you mix up Cecily Von Ziegesar's delightfully trashy Gossip Girl series with Dickens's classic Great Expectations, and throw in a splash of Animal Farm by George Orwell? A really readable YA contemporary story which has surprising depth and has been one I've been thinking about a lot since originally reading it towards the start of the year. I read Stella for the first time after getting it out of the library, and at the time I was extremely impressed by the voices of lead characters Stella and Caitlin, but had issues with it. On rereading, to prepare myself for upcoming prequel Siena, I think it's one of the relatively few books I've read recently which works even better second time around, although those issues haven't vanished completely. Full review...
Imagination According to Humphrey by Betty G Birney
If you haven't already, meet Humphrey – the most squeakily vocal inhabitant of Classroom 26. The charming and inventive hamster is here with yet another of his main novels – as opposed to early readers, quiz and joke books, anthologies, guides to having pets – there are so many around that my edition didn't try to put them all on one inventory page, but chose to leave a few out. Here the series continues with Humphrey and the same children as he's befriended over the last few volumes, and it's storytime. The class is being read a novel about a boy and the dragons doing evil to his village's weather, and everyone is trying to write creatively about flying as a response. But when someone threatens to bring a real-life dragon to class, how could the little class pet be safe, especially when he hasn't the imagination to see what the result could be? Full review...
The Saint Closes the Case by Leslie Charteris and John Telfer (narrator)
On the way back to London with Patricia Holm late one night, Simon Templar saw a strange pulsing light and couldn't resist going to investigate. What he discovered was a demonstration of a weapon which could well bring the world to war a mere twelve years after the end of the Great War. Templar and his confederates concluded that the weapon could not be allowed to come into the public domain - and if necessary the inventor (who could easily recreate the weapon even if he gave assurances to the contrary) would need to be, er, sidelined. Unfortunately Templar and friends are not the only ones in search of the weapon: his old nemesis, Rayt Marius, has his own plans. Full review...
The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson
Fourteen-year-old David has always known that he is a transgender girl. (Note: As David uses male pronouns in his internal dialogue I have continued to do so in my review.) However David has chosen a new girl's name and collects feminine clothes to express that inner self. This is a secret kept from everyone except his best friends Essie and Felix. When Leo Denton, who also has a secret, moves to David's school Eden Park from the rougher Cloverdale, the worlds of the two collide. Full review...
That Night by Chevy Stevens
It’s been 17 years since Toni went to prison for the murder of her sister. 17 years since she last saw her boyfriend Ryan, also convicted for the murder, since she had a meaningful conversation with her parents, since she went to a coffee shop or walked on the beach. Sent down when she was still a teenager, she’s been incarcerated for virtually half of her life and though she’s now coming up for parole, it’s not as easy as simply going back to her old life from before. Full review...
The Vanishing Moment by Margaret Wild
This book appealed to me on various grounds. It is teen fiction (and, joy of joys, devoid of werewolves and dystopia), it is by an Australian author (under-represented on UK shelves), and it involves parallel universes (tantalising philosophical what-ifs). I was intrigued to see if the author could live up to my expectations. Full review...
The Last Leaves Falling by Sarah Benwell
I have my usual problem attempting anything close to a plot summary of something I really love - this will probably make the maximum possible impact if you go into it, as I did, knowing barely anything about it. If you trust my recommendations enough to buy on one sentence, stop reading now and pre-order - this is a heart-breakingly gorgeous read which will almost definitely be one of the best books, YA or otherwise, published in 2015. Full review...
Forty Days Without Shadow by Olivier Truc
After an important Sámi relic is stolen from a museum in Kautokeino, a small, isolated village in the middle of the snowy tundra, tensions begin to rise between the residents. Local detective Klemet Nango and new recruit Nina Nansen are called upon to investigate the disappearance, whereupon they discover a second crime: a local reindeer herder has been brutally murdered. Nina soon suspects that the two events are linked, and, together with Klemet, embarks upon a journey full of secrets, mystery and brutality. Full review...
The Vanished Ones by Donato Carrisi
Room 13 in the basement of the state morgue is where the sleepers are kept. These are the unclaimed bodies that have been classified as PHVs. Potential Homicide Victims. They are kept indefinitely, because they are evidence that a crime has been committed, possibly the only evidence. Full review...
Abattoir Blues by Peter Robinson
When DCI Banks returned from a weekend away in Italy the theft of a tractor (even if it was a very expensive tractor) didn't seem all that important. It was difficult to be enthusiastic about what seemed to be simple case of rural crime. Then an ex-soldier walking his dog discovered what looked like a pool of blood in an abandoned warehouse and the two young men who seemed to be the prime suspects for the theft of the tractor both disappeared without trace. Suddenly 'another rural crime' began to take a very much more sinister turn. Full review...
Travelling to Infinity: The True Story Behind the Theory of Everything by Jane Hawking
Travelling to Infinity maps the tapestry of a rich and complex life.
Jane Hawking, the first wife of acclaimed scientist Stephen Hawking, reveals the inner-workings of their life together. Reflecting on the meteoric rise of her husband alongside his physical deterioration, she charts the path of their marriage and family throughout the highs and lows of their circumstance. As asserted by the author herself this story could indeed belong to any English family of the era. What sets this one apart, however, is the fame and publicity of one family member, the widely celebrated, Stephen Hawking. Full review...
The Earl I Adore by Erin Knightley
Poor Sophie Wembley has been placed in a desperate situation thanks to her sister Penelope, who has eloped with the 'hired help'. Once news of the scandal reaches the gossip-mongers of the 'ton', Sophie and her family will be ousted from polite society and her hopes of finding an eligible husband will be ruined. It is therefore up to Sophie's scheming mother to persuade her to snare herself a man before the gossip becomes public knowledge. Time is clearly of the essence and when it comes to suitable husbands, Sophie knows only one man will do: the handsome Earl of Evansleigh, for whom she has been harbouring a 'tendre' for the past year. Full review...
Letters to Lovecraft : Eighteen Whispers to the Darkness by Jesse Bullington (editor)
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was, to me, the author of ruinously mediocre post-Victorian penny dreadful horror fiction, concerning far too numerous many-tentacled, secretly-worshipped, extra-dimensional monster threats to mankind for his – and our – own good. It's little wonder that he lived and died in poverty, and only became of note posthumously. That note seems to be building, however, hence this collection of stories by many award-winning modern writers of the dark and macabre, all looking back yet going much further, and pretty much all providing us with a showcase for their own, contemporary talent. Full review...
Tennyson: To strive, to seek, to find by John Batchelor
Most readers, if they were asked to name the ultimate poet of the Victorian age, would almost surely choose Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He was Poet Laureate for over forty years of Queen Victoria’s reign, and inevitably her favourite versifier. Full review...
My True Love Gave to Me by Stephanie Perkins (Editor)
I mentioned when reviewing Let It Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle that there was a real lack of festive YA around – at the time, I think the choice seemed to be pretty much limited to that or Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn. Both fantastic books, but a thin spread compared to the amount out there for adults and for younger children. (If I’m missing obvious ones, by the way, please let me know!) Thankfully, a dozen authors, with Stephanie Perkins as the editor, have got together to produce a perfect Christmas present here with twelve short stories set around the holidays. Full review...
No Known Grave (A Detective Inspector Tom Tyler Mystery) by Maureen Jennings
By the middle of 1942 Detective Inspector Tom Tyler has had a difficult two years and he's making a fresh start in Ludlow. St Anne's Convalescent Hospital is on the outskirts of the town and it's staffed by nursing sisters who are Anglican nuns and they're there specifically to help people who have been maimed and injured by the war. It should be a peaceful place of recovery but then a double murder in the grounds of the home shatters all that has been so carefully built up. Many of the patients are blind or unable to walk and most are suffering from what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder - but it seems as though one of the patients must be a murderer as this is almost a classic 'locked room' mystery. Full review...
Goodhouse by Peyton Marshall
There have been times in history when governments have thought they knew who the criminal underclass was. This did not lead to anything good under the Nazis and the same can be said of the Goodhouse regime. If we knew that certain genetics led to an increased chance of criminality, wouldn’t educating these people when they were young be a good thing? Prevention is better than cure, but I am not sure if fascism is. Full review...
Silent Night by Jack Sheffield
I read a couple of Jack Sheffield’s books about five years ago, and enjoyed them very much. They were written in a similar style to those popularised by, for instance, James Herriot or Gervase Phinn, told mostly in the first person, describing the author’s first couple of years as Headmaster at a small village primary school in Yorkshire. The village of Ragley is fictional, as are most of the characters, but the incidents and situations encountered are based on the author’s experience. Full review...
Sausage Hall by Christina James
Kevan de Vries, food processing magnate and grandson of a Dutch immigrant to Lincolnshire, is trying to help his terminally ill wife Joanne relax on an exotic holiday. Unfortunately the news he receives from home is less than relaxing: a random break-in committed by local opportunistic youths has uncovered a batch of counterfeit passports. Kevan travels back to the UK to answer questions but it gets worse. Skeletal remains are found in his cellar followed by a discovery elsewhere of an all too fresh employee's dead body. This is bread and butter to DI Tim Yates of the Lincolnshire Constabulary but it's another complication in Kevan's all too complicated life. Full review...
The Jolly Dodgers! Pirates Who Pretended by Neil Griffiths and Janette Louden
I’ll get started with this point; the layout of this book is utterly wonderful. It’s got a great subject matter, pirates are always popular both with adults and children, and the story of a group of pirates who don’t really want to be pirates but who are being forced into it by their pushy wives, is a terribly entertaining one. But it is the layout, style and all the extras which are working the hardest in this book's favour. Full review...
Hider, Seeker, Secret Keeper by Elizabeth Kiem
I was caught up by this novel from the first pages and read it with absorption in a single sitting. The young heroine, Lana Dukovskaya, is a third generation ballerina with the Bolshoi Ballet but the experiences of her mother and grandmother are shrouded and lost. Her grandmother's name, we discover, has been erased from the records and her mother is a troubled secretive figure. Lana challenges the conventional notion of a ballerina: she has close cropped hair, loves high speed motor bikes and most of all she wants to experiment with the repertoire. Full review...
Horrid Henry's Tricky Tricks by Francesca Simon
Horrid Henry is up to his usual antics in this latest compilation of trickiest tricks ever. The book features ten stories, which include some outrageous pranks, like Henry trying to wake the dead, win a pet talent contest and spend a hair-raising weekend with his awful cousin, Stuck-up Steve. But none of this compares to his scariest challenge ever; braving a girls' sleepover at his neighbour, Moody Margaret's house. Full review...
The Royals: Masters of War by Rob Williams and Simon Coleby
It's World War Two, but not as we know it. The circumstance is building up to be pretty much what we know – the Allies have ideas to land at Normandy, the Germans have rockets ready to pummel a Blighty only just getting over the Battle of Britain, and the Americans are being pressured by Churchill to enter the war, little knowing what Japan would have in mind to force the issue. But many things are different. For this is a world where the Royal blood disease of Europe is not something ailing, debilitating and embarrassing, but instead the giver of super powers. The names in Buckingham Palace are different, but the opulence remains, and with the history of the current incumbents one where their powers are not exercised, people are being tasked with making sure that remains so. But how can you stop an immovable force when it has enough might and strength to turn the tide of the war single-handed? Full review...
Peacock Pie: A Book of Rhymes by Walter de la Mare
It was a surprise for me to read online that Walter de la Mare spent so much of his life in and around London – born at least in what is now the borough of Greenwich, passing away in Twickenham. The reason I say this is that out of the copious poems collected here, it's as if cities don't live. Hardly anything of the subjects is manmade. The concentration is fully on the idyllic and pastoral, and in following on so closely in the footsteps of his debut collection, 'Songs of Childhood' from 1902, still very, very much Victorian. Full review...
It's In The Cards by Pamela Fudge
Ellen Carson was just slightly put out that her family arranged a surprise birthday party for her fortieth, but more annoyed that they wouldn't accept that she was quite happy being single and unattached. She had a successful career as a card designer, a home she loved and no intentions of getting into any long-term relationship. What did make her wonder was why her brothers and sisters were so keen to get her involved with any remotely eligible male when their own relationships were so dysfunctional. She had no interest in the two men from her past who have come back into her life - or the one who has been hovering round the edges more in hope than expectation. Full review...
Tsunami Kids: Our journey from survival to success by Paul Forkan and Rob Forkan
On Boxing Day 2004, when many of us were celebrating the Christmas holidays with our families, eating leftover turkey, reading books and enjoying time with loved ones, a huge tragedy was unfolding on the other side of the world. The Boxing Day Tsunami killed over 230,000 people, and caused widespread devastation to large parts of Sri Lanka, Thailand, India, the Maldives and Somalia. The Forkan family - Mum, Dad, and four of their children, were in Sri Lanka, a spur of the moment choice of destination that ultimately proved to be tragic. The parents, Kevin and Sandra, were killed in the flood. The children, orphaned, injured and without any possessions, traveled the 200 kilometres back to a city, where they contacted elder siblings and were swiftly flown back to the UK. Full review...
Brother of Sleep by Robert Schneider
Brother of Sleep tells the story of Elias Johannes Alder, a child born into a god forsaken village high in the Austrian Vorarlberg. He came into the world as a silent child, while his mother was screaming and the midwife wasn't really paying attention. It took a couple of loud intonations of the Te Deum from the neglectful nurse before he finally uttered a sound. Full review...
Macaulay: Britain's Liberal Imperialist by Zareer Masani
If Thomas Babington Macaulay is remembered at all today, it is probably for the historical writings to which he devoted himself during the last few years of his life. Yet earlier in his career, he was also a Member of Parliament, a government minister, and served for some years in India, playing a major reforming role as a member of the governor-general’s council. Full review...
Tales from Acorn Wood: Hide-and-Seek Pig by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler
Pig and Hen decide to play hide-and-seek and whilst Pig counts to ten, Hen goes off to hide. Pig thinks that she's found Hen straight away when she spots a yellow beak behind the gate, but when we lift the gate flap we discover that the yellow beak belongs to Blackbird, who happily joins in the hunt for Hen. Could that be Hen hiding in a tent? There's a long brown ear peeping out from behind the flap, but when it's lifted, we discover Rabbit, who joins the two hunters. She was having a drink when she was found, but she brings her mug along with her. Before Hen is eventually found we've collected quite a few seekers! Full review...
