Book Reviews From 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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Invisible Romans: Prostitutes, Outlaws, Slaves, Gladiators, Ordinary Men and Women … the Romans that History Forgot by Robert Knapp
This academic title by Robert Knapp, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, will be welcomed by serious students of the Roman Empire. It goes without saying that this research provides a valuable supplement to the existing academic literature. From the meticulous attention to detail, I suspect that amassing the material was a labour of love over a lifetime of analysing more prominent Roman citizens. Clues have been inferred from classical literature, culled from epitaphs and deduced from archaeological finds (particularly Pompeii), since hardly any evidence of ordinary folks' lives has otherwise survived. Full review...
Uugghh! by Claudia Boldt
I like it when I find a completely different style in this genre of book as it reminds me that picture books are not just for the under fives, they can reach a much wider audience as well as giving out strong and important messages. This book is an interesting one; it is obviously giving a very clear message about self perception and image, which implies that everybody is special to somebody and you can always find beauty in the world, even if not everybody find beauty in you. Full review...
The Dark Threads by Jean Davison
Like any other teenage girl in the 60s, Jean Davison spent her days playing records, hanging out in coffee shops with girlfriends and undertaking her first fumbles with boys. She was bright, a talented and eager writer full of dreams about the future. Full review...
Never be Lonely by Pamela Fudge
There was a moment when Francesca Dudley wondered quite what she was doing in a church in Canada. She'd barely recovered from the lengthy flight and here she was listening to people extol the virtues of Mitchell Browning, now deceased. Francesca hadn't seen him since he left the family home when she was four and now, four decades later, she was coming to terms with the fact that her father had still been alive, only to find that he was dead – if you see what I mean. Mitchell has not just left her fatherless though – there seems to be a whole tribe of people bereaved by his death and at least one of them doesn't seem all that keen that she should be there. Full review...
John Dies at the End by David Wong
'John Dies at the End' begins with friends John and Dave going to a party and meeting a Jamaican drug dealer who provides John with a hit of something called 'soy sauce'. Thereafter, John starts to see things that others can't see. Dave thinks he has had a bad reaction to the drug until he accidentally takes a hit and also starts to have strange experiences, seeing odd shadow creatures, none of whom are very friendly. Even worse, people start to die and a dog takes on human characteristics. Before long, John and Dave are facing death on a regular basis and are aware that they have access to dimensions that normal people don't know about. Full review...
Sisyphusa by Michael Richmond
The back cover blurb tells us that the mentally ill (for whatever reason or reasons) are still stigmatised by various sectors of society. I would agree. I then flip the book over to the front cover which has the words 'the mental health publisher' and straight away some of us may already be making a judgement (perhaps unfairly too) before they even open the book. Perhaps this up-front honesty by the publisher negates somewhat the terrific title and terrific graphics of the cover. Just my own personal opinion here. The publishing company is being supported by the Arts Council, England. Full review...
The Walkers of Legend by Miles Allen
The Empire controls nine-tenths of the globe, but even this doesn't supply enough victims to keep enough blood flowing from the Yan-producing chambers. And so the new Emperor sets about a plan to invade the last remaining free lands. Advance parties are abducting mages to leave the defenders exposed and vulnerable. This is nothing new - it's an obvious tactic - but among the refugees is Chayne, a young man of startling power and promise. Chayne's potential is soon discovered by the advancing army's chief mage, Lathashal, and the young Mlendrian finds himself a favoured apprentice. Full review...
Jake Ransom and the Howling Sphinx by James Rollins
James Rollins has hit upon a truly brilliant premise in this series. People and creatures from our world have been transported at various times to a savage, prehistoric place called Calypsos, and in the first volume, Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow Jake and his sister find themselves suddenly whisked to a city where Romans, Mayans, Neanderthals and groups from many other societies, places and eras live more or less peaceably side by side. Their archaeologist parents disappeared three years before, and the two young people's struggles to survive, and to defeat Kalverum Rex, the Skull King, go side by side with their hope of finding a trace there of their mother and father. Full review...
Alice by Judith Hermann
Alice is a collection of five short stories, linked thematically since they all deal with the subject of death, but they are also linked because the central character, Alice, is the same in each story. So rather than feeling like short stories the book has a hint of the novel to it, yet the stories are never completed or fully told so it's a novel where you're not always sure what's going on. Full review...
Isabella by Fiona Mountain
The fate of mutineer, Fletcher Christian in the 18th century remains a mystery even today but Fiona Mountain has pieced together a dramatic and powerful story based on rumours and clues that Fletcher returned to England to be with his long-lost love, Isabella Curwen. Fletcher, the son of a bankrupt family and Isabella, the sole heiress of a huge fortune are prevented from marrying. Their relationship is manipulated by those around them and a young, naïve Isabella is forced to marry her cousin, John. Full review...
Milicent's Book by Charlotte Moore
'My name is Milicent Bella Ludlow and I am an orphan'.
So opens this story told in diary form of a year in the life of a young Victorian girl whose father has just died. Luckily there are some kind and loving relatives willing to help her and Mabel, her older sister, and they are able to stay living in their family home, Yotes, for a while. Full review...
Ballad by Maggie Stiefvater
After his best friend fell in love with a faerie, James realised she would never love him that way. But his attempts to get away from her, and the unrequited love he still nurses, only lead him straight to more faeries than ever before. For at James' new school, Thornking-Ash, the student populace is entirely made of musical prodigies. And there's nothing that attracts faeries more than music. James has even attracted his own muse – the deadly and dangerously attractive Nuala. The music she helps him make is better than he could ever manage on his own, but James knows the deadly consequences of making a deal with faeries, and he knows Nuala won't give him freebies for long. Full review...
Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan: His Life and Character by Andrew Crowther
Gilbert and Sullivan were the Rice and Lloyd Webber of the late Victorian era. Some might regard their work as slightly dated these days, especially the satirical lyrics which were so much a product of their time, but their appeal has never really faded and it surely never will. Full review...
The Siren by Alison Bruce
I recently read and reviewed Bruce's The Calling and thoroughly enjoyed it so I was hoping that this book would be equally good. The location is once again Cambridge. Two young women hastily meet up after hearing a local news item. A male body has been discovered in a gruesome and sorry state and has sent the two women into a right old flap. Although both are now in steady relationships and Kimberly is a mum, they obviously share a shady past together. 'It was a joke between them: Kimberly gets them both into trouble, Rachel gets them out.' Full review...
Don't Put Your Pants on Your Head, Fred by Caryl Hart and Leigh Hodgkinson
This is a gem of a book. Fred just can't get to grips with his underwear; pants and vests alike, it's taking him most of the day to get dressed and it's going to take much more than his sister's endless advice to help. Caryl Hart and Leigh Hodgkinson have made a great job of turning what is just a nice premise into a brilliant book. Though some might suggest that pants have been overdone in the world of picture books, I think I could find a few thousand five year olds who would disagree. Full review...
Jacobs Beach: The Mob, the Garden, and the Golden Age of Boxing by Kevin Mitchell
Despite not being a particular fan of the sport of boxing, Kevin Mitchell's compelling knowledge of the personalities involved in the fight game in the 20th century, coupled with a staccato writing style which got my attention quickly and kept it to the very last page, meant this book actually rose far above my expectations. Full review...
Unearthly by Cynthia Hand
Clara wants what ordinary teenagers want: friends, good school grades, a boyfriend. Only Clara isn't an ordinary teenager – she's part angel. She's fluent in all languages, naturally gifted academically and in sports. All the good stuff comes with a price, but even that's not so bad. Clara has a Purpose, an angelic calling, to save a mysterious boy from a forest fire, revealed to her in a series of visions that can strike any time of day or night. Full review...
Before I Go To Sleep by S J Watson
Rather ironically, 'Before I Go To Sleep' is not a book that you will forget in a hurry. Imagine, if you will, waking up every morning with no memory of who you are, where you are, or who the person lying next to you in bed is. You can remember things during the day, but once you go to sleep, your mind is effectively wiped clean. This is the slightly unusual form of amnesia that the narrator, Christine suffers from in Watson's first novel that is a daring and gripping literary thriller. Full review...
The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
'It can't be a coincidence that Stepford women are all the way they are' says Bobbie, Joanna Eberhart's only friend in Stepford. Joanna has recently come to live in the idyllic suburban town of Stepford with her husband and two children. She is an independent woman with her own part-time career as a photographer, is intelligent, liberated and has a keen interest in feminism. Full review...
The Lion Storyteller Book of Animal Tales by Bob Hartman and Krisztina Kallai Nagy
If you want to know how the turkey got its spots, or what advice was given by a lion, or even why the tortoise has no hair, then this is the book for you. It holds a collection of thirty six enchanting stories that will answer these questions and many many more. There are well known fables from Ancient Greece such as The Fox and The Crow and The Boastful Toad, and many other traditional tales from countries such as Japan, Indonesia, Peurto Rico, Syria and India to mention just a few. As you would expect, with tales from so many different parts of the world, there is great variety within this collection which also enables children to read about many different cultures, beliefs and ways of life. Full review...
Paraphernalia: The Curious Lives of Magical Things by Steven Connor
...In which our author considers the smaller, less noticeable items in our lives. He finds such objects as sticky tape, combs and keys magical, because "we can do whatever we like to things, but magical things are things that we allow and expect to do things back to us. Magical things all do more, and mean more than they might be supposed to." Principally these are the little flotsam that wash up on our desks, the handy things we keep in our pockets and about our person, and never think about - wave about, flick about, fiddle with, but never think about. Full review...
Wrecker by Summer Wood
I found the book title intriguing and wondered if I'd got caught up in some demolition yard story by mistake. Wood, at some stage in the book does give her readers the explanation. It's a boy's name apparently and the detailed explanation is rather charming - and apt. But it's also just a tad over-the-top (in terms of credibility I'm thinking) and by the time I'd finished the book I was heartily sick of this name which had short-term appeal for me. I was muttering to myself saying silly things like - why can't he be called Billy, for example. But I'm not writing the book. Full review...
The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You by Eli Pariser
In a world where websites are increasingly personalised, and your Facebook profile seems to pop up left, right and centre on sites you're visiting for the first time, there's a rapidly shrinking amount of webpages where your experience is the same as the next person's. Having always ignored Google's targetted adverts, I naively thought the actual search results produced by the site were one of the few places where I'd see the same thing as a random user in, say, Australia did. Eli Pariser shatters this myth immediately in his book as he tells us about the fifty-seven signals Google uses to build on the company's knowledge of us and choose which results to show us. Full review...
No Off Switch: The Autobiography by Andy Kershaw
'The boy Kershaw' as his hero and later friend John Peel sometimes wryly referred to him on air, has had a pretty remarkable life. He's been – taken a deep breath – a concert promoter while studying politics at Leeds University, Billy Bragg's driver across most of Europe, a presenter on BBC TV and successively also on Radios 1, 3 and 4, a news correspondent reporting from Iraq, Haiti, Angola and Rwanda, and also done time as a guest of Her Majesty. Full review...
Signs of Life by Natalie Taylor
Natalie Taylor was just twenty four years old, and five months pregnant, when her husband died in a tragic accident. This memoir takes us from the day she found out he was dead through to her son's first birthday. Natalie's situation is horribly sad. I can't even begin to imagine what I would have done in her place. The record of her grieving process is very raw and honest. Based upon her journals that she kept through this time her pain leaps off the page and makes you feel sick inside for the horror she's facing. I liked that she doesn't seem to be advocating a correct way to grieve. She simply states how she felt, how she reacted at each moment, be that calmly and quietly or with raging, screaming tears. Luckily she had an extremely supportive family and a good group of friends and it is interesting - if rather disturbing - to follow her progress as she deals with her life without her husband. Full review...
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Peerless Peer by Philip Jose Farmer
It's World War One, and Britain has got wind of some brilliant scientific research, that has created a new bacterial weapon capable of wiping out the world's supply of sauerkraut. But a dastardly German has stolen the formula. Before he can give a variant based on boiled meat, cabbage and potatoes to the kaiser, his most recent nemesis - Sherlock Holmes, no less - must be brought out of beekeeping retirement. Cue an adventure and a half, as he and Watson take to the skies for the first time in their hectic lives, end up in darkest Africa, and encounter a certain yodelling, long-haired nobleman, more than up to the name of King of the Jungle... Full review...
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1969 by Kevin O'Neill and Alan Moore
So much for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Of the three main protagonists available for this adventure, one and a half are female! Anyway, Bram Stoker's Mina, Woolf's Orlando and Allan Quatermain are in London at the height of the swinging 60s, amidst rumours that a new attempt at birthing an Antichrist is about to occur. Certainly, the evil they've faced the last several decades will soon get a new face... Full review...
The Medusa Project: Double Cross by Sophie McKenzie
Each of the 'Medusa Project' books is narrated by one of the teens involved in turn, and this time it is Nico who is the first person speaker. Things are not going well for the group: their former mentor Geri has just tried to kill them, and by using all her government and police contacts she has managed to make it look as if they are guilty of murder. The four teens' psychic abilities allow them to escape to France, and now they need to work out how to stop Geri and clear their names. But things just get worse and worse: the strain of their situation and the introduction of new characters start to pull the group apart just at the time when they need to trust each other the most. Full review...
Chronosphere: Malfunction by Alex Woolf
The ideal paradise of life inside the Chronosphere isn't supposed to be like this. If you're like Raffi and his friends you're spending a year inside, which only takes a minute of real life, enjoying a hedonistic, summery lifestyle with time on your hands and little cares. Except it's getting more than summery, it's a hothouse; the food is running out; the exits are locked; and people are rioting and fighting amongst each other as tempers fly and people sicken and feel the end of their happiness. But then, if you're like Raffi and his friends, you are actually unknowingly there for a much more sinister reason, and someone's "project" is about to get much less Utopian. Full review...
Dr Xargle's Book Of Earth Tiggers by Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross
We have met Dr Xargle before, telling his class all about 'earthlets' and 'earth hounds', so now we see him again bumbling through his lesson with highly amusing misinformation about Earth Tiggers, or cats as we like to call them. As with many books by these authors, Dr Xargle's Book of Earth Tiggers is very witty indeed. The illustrations are funny as ever and work together with the words incredibly well, as without the correct pictures, this style of books can fly over the heads of little readers. Full review...
My Michael by Amos Oz
The Introduction to this book has a lovely sub-heading - 'Forty Years Later' where Oz admits freely that now, today, he wouldn't attempt or ... 'dare write an entire novel in a female voice.' But I found his open telling of why and how he came to write the book in the first place interesting and rather enchanting and whetted my appetite to get on and read the book. For example, Oz wrote most of the book in the cramped confines of a toilet, would you believe. But for me what caught my attention was the fact that he tells his readers that Hannah, the central character, was in his head and determined to he heard. 'Just shut up and write' she tells him. A Translator's Note follows before we get to the story proper. Full review...
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
This book has reached the dizzy heights of an International Bestseller with plaudits all over its covers. And it's a debut novel, albeit by an author who has worked in journalism. So, am I going to be another notch on the book-reading bedpost, so to speak? Full review...
Stanley Gibbons Great Britain Concise Stamp Catalogue 2011 by Hugh Jefferies
Such are the complexity, the sheer variety and number of permutations possible of postage stamp issues in the 21st century, that any catalogue compiler is faced with an almost impossible task. Producing a genuinely concise book is largely a matter of what to include and what to leave out. Full review...
