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.
There are currently 16,117 reviews at TheBookbag.
Want to find out more about us?
New Reviews
Read new reviews by genre.
Read new features.
A Short History of England by Simon Jenkins
Most of us see history rather like a cloud. We're aware of the great mass of it, seeing some parts more clearly than others, but perhaps struggling to bring it into a straight line. Some parts we will have studied at school, or read about out of interest but these parts will be balanced by other periods when we will be woefully ignorant of some of the most basic facts. I've studied the Tudors in some depth at various points in my life – but I would struggle to tell you much about the Stuarts. What was needed was a concise history of England in one volume and written for the adult reader who would simply like to be more informed, but not over-burdened. Full review...
Daniel by Henning Mankell
A young Hans Bengler has decided to leave his homeland of Sweden and make an expedition across the inhospitable Kalahari Desert. Brave - or extremely foolish. I'm sticking with the latter. My reasons are that Bengler is portrayed by Mankell as a rather dull, insular and unimaginative young man. He doesn't really get along with his family (such as they are) nor does he seem to have many friends. It's also plain that he's desperate to leave his cold Sweden for warmer climes. But at what cost? Full review...
The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life by Bettany Hughes
We don't know much about Socrates. For someone whose ideas are still so relevant so long after his death, his life is something of a mystery. He didn't like to write things down, and so Hughes begins this book by saying that it may have something of a 'Socrates-sized hole' in it. What we do see is the city of Athens, and the hugely important changes which were going on there while Socrates was alive. In Athens we see the beginnings of democracy, the seedlings of some of the ideas that we take for granted today, such as freedom of speech, and the right to a fair trial. This was an important time in the development of modern values, and Socrates was an important man. He was not only a brilliant thinker, he was also a man that didn't quite fit, infuriating to converse with, yet fascinating to be around. Full review...
Milly-Molly-Mandy's Friends by Joyce Lankester Brisley
Milly-Molly-Mandy doesn't much mind being an only child when she has people like Little Friend Susan, Billy Blunt and Miss Muggins's Jilly to play with. And what fun they have! With overnight guests, trips in the pony-trap, dressing up as Proper Ladies, running races and even forming secret clubs, there's never a dull moment. Full review...
Creative Parchment Cards: Incorporating Siesta Grids by Patricia Wing
Here at Bookbag we've long admired Patricia Wing's ability not just to produce beautiful hand-made cards but to guide us through the process of making them. We've seen her regularly in 'Crafts Beautiful' magazine, so we know that she's a name that you can rely on. Equally reassuring is the fact that she came to card making in middle age – giving hope to anyone who feels that they have left it too late to learn a new craft. We know that we're in a safe – and very creative – pair of hands. Full review...
Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif
Alice is nervous. She's being interviewed for a job at the local hospital. Even although her nursing skills are far from ideal, she believes she's in with a shout. She presents herself at her charming best and it seems to work. She's now employed and earning some much-needed money. She knows she'll have to work really hard and probably long hours too. The hospital in question is in downtown Karachi: a seething mass of patients many of whom have no choice but to lie in corridors etc. Full review...
Into Dust by Jonathan Lewis
The front cover graphics leave the reader in no doubt that this is a thriller and the blurb on the back cover mentions the troubles in Afghanistan, deadly bombs, sniffer dogs, so the theme here is bang up to-date and many would possibly say, relevant. Full review...
Good Offices by Evelio Rosero
Here is a church in Bogota nobody seems to want to leave. In part one it is a large group of the elderly, given a weekly, tasteless meal from the charitable funds, but bitterly refusing to quit the place, making our main character Tancredo fear for his passivity. In part two it is the congregation, as a rare need for a stand-in priest seems to be a blessing. And in part three it is that priest himself, stuck among the household of Tancredo, the girl who loves him, and chorus of three weird old women. Full review...
The Quality of Mercy by Barry Unsworth
'The Quality of Mercy' picks up the story of the author's Booker Prize-winning 'Sacred Hunger' although if you haven't read the first book, you won't be greatly disadvantaged as the relevant story lines are explained. What you might miss out on is some of the feeling for a few of the main characters, most notably the Irish fiddler, Sullivan who, when this book picks up in spring 1767, has just escaped from prison where the remaining shipmates of the slave ship, the 'Liverpool Merchant' await their trial of piracy. Slavery and abolition thereof remains a central theme of this sequel, but the book draws some poignant similarities with those in bondage due to poverty, and particularly those working in the coal mines of County Durham. Full review...
Milly-Molly-Mandy's Family by Joyce Lankester Brisley
Millicent Margaret Amanda (that's Milly-Molly-Mandy to you and me) lives with Father and Mother and Grandpa and Grandma and Uncle and Aunty (and Toby the dog) in a nice white cottage with a thatched roof. And do you know, she has all sorts of adventures. She goes out into town alone to fetch things for her extended family, she goes to a concert where she even knows one of the performers, she gets invited to parties in the village hall, and she does it all with the company of Little Friend Susan and Billy Blunt. Full review...
The Giant Book of Giants by Saviour Pirotta and Mark Robertson
There's a rather large giant's eye starting back at me from the cover of this book...I'm not scared though, because the book promises that the giant contained within is a gentle giant who will guard my room! And he really is contained within since this is a book set which includes a book of giant stories from around the world as well as a huge giant poster (over one metre high!) which is in 3D and contains moving parts! Full review...
Operation Napoleon by Arnaldur Indridason
In 1945 a German bomber crashed on a glacier in Iceland. This might not have been quite so extraordinary were it not for the fact that there were both German and American officers on board. Two of the passengers are killed in the crash, one sets off for help and four people remain, trapped in the plane, eventually freezing to death. Just before the end of last century the glacier gave up the plane and the US army began an operation to remove the wreckage as secretly as possible, but two young Icelanders are caught up in what is going on. One contacts his sister but before he can complete the call they are grabbed by the soldiers, brutally attacked and their bodies and snowmobiles dumped in a crevasse. Full review...
An A to Z of Pirates by Caroline Stills and Heath McKenzie
Pirates! There seems to be, in my experience, an age at which almost every small child goes through a pirate phase. My daughter's certainly been there, to the extent that she had a full pirate costume, complete with a knitted parrot and a knitted eye patch (thank you Nanna!) that she'll happily wear around town. So if there's a little pirate in your life this is the sort of book they're going to thoroughly enjoy. Full review...
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Some books sneak up on you. Others are thrown at you from every corner of the media to the extent that you almost make a conscious decision NOT to read them, or at least, not yet. Let the furore die down. If they're still around in a few years, your subconscious whispers, maybe we'll go see what all the fuss was about. Full review...
Elmer and Super El by David McKee
In 'Elmer and Super El', Elmer, the patchwork elephant, is out walking when he comes across his friend Super El who is very upset. His clothes have been ripped by a thorn bush and he is scared that all of the other animals will laugh at him because he looks so shabby. Elmer knows that his Aunt Zelda will be able to fix the clothes but how can he help his friend get past all of the animals without being noticed? He has to come up with some ingenious ideas in order to distract the elephants, Lion and Tiger, all of the hippos and the rest of the animals. Luckily, clever Elmer always comes up with a plan and no one ends up laughing at Super El. Full review...
Hell Ship by Philip Palmer
Some time ago, I read Philip Palmer's debut novel Debatable Space. Whilst there were aspects of that novel I didn't feel entirely worked, it was a well paced read for the most part and I marked Palmer as a writer to watch. His subsequent novels, Red Claw and Version 43, have been well received here at The Bookbag and his fourth, Hell Ship, isn't bad either. Full review...
Calamities and Catastrophes: The Ten Absolutely Worst Years in History by Derek Wilson
As Wilson rightly points out, history is generally written by the winners. This book turns the tables by looking at ten of the worst episodes from the point of view of those who were on the losing side, from the sixth to the late twentieth centuries. Starting with the plague and war of 541-2 which accelerated the collapse of the Roman Empire, to the recent Rwandan genocide in which the death toll over just a few months probably exceeded a million, history has had an uncomfortable habit of repeating itself. Full review...
On Tolerance: The Life Style Wars: A Defence of Moral Independence by Frank Furedi
Furedi is a Professor of Sociology at a UK university so he'll know his subject matter inside out. The short preface tells us that 'tolerance has been emptied of its moral and intellectual meaning.' This publication's aim is to argue the case for tolerance in society. How its meaning has changed over the centuries until today's rather fuzzy and watered-down meaning. Professor Furedi was spurred on to writing this book because he firmly believes that tolerance has been lost somehow, to be almost invisible in some areas of public and private life. Full review...
The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje
For the first half or so of this book, which sees an 11 year old boy called Michael (or Mynah to his friends) leave his home of Ceylon to travel to school in England, I wasn't really sure if it even had a plot. Focusing on his journey in the 1950's aboard the ship to England, although occasionally leaping forward to his later life where he gives us tantalising glimpses as to what happened to his fellow passengers after the voyage, this originally seems to be nothing more than a series of incredibly well-drawn character sketches. In fairness, I should say that nothing more is rather harsh in this case – the men, women and children Ondaatje creates, from a supposedly cursed rich man seeking a cure, to a friendly thief, to Michael's beautiful cousin Emily, are so beautifully conjured that I could have lived without a plot perfectly happily. However, we eventually realise there's a little more to this narrative, and that this skilful author has been foreshadowing the events at the novel's climax all along. Full review...
The Chocolate Box Girls: Marshmallow Skye by Cathy Cassidy
It doesn't seem like a year since I first met the Tanberry sisters in Cherry Crush because they're all very fresh in my mind. The five girls – four of them are called Tanberry and Cherry is their step-sister – are all just preteen or in their early teens, with Honey as the oldest and Coco as the youngest. Honey is still not coping with the fact that her father has left – and is now living in Australia – or with the arrival of Paddy and Cherry. On occasions she's not just difficult – she's dreadful. Full review...
Hartslove by K M Grant
1861, Epsom. A young lad, Garth, is at the start of the biggest horse race in the land, astride The One, an ungainly but lightning-fast three year old who had never been ridden until just months ago. At the side of the track, Garth's five sisters, and friends, are willing him on. How can this young jockey win the race, upon which the fate of their castle home and so much more depends? And what are we to learn after the prologue that sets all this out, that would make us want him to NOT win? Full review...
The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness
'The Last Hundred Days' in question here are the final days of Ceausescu's Romania in late 1989. Narrated by an unnamed young British expat who has a job offer from the English department of Bucharest University, despite never having interviewed for the job, we get an insight into the life under communist rule as Eastern bloc countries all around start to open up after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We are told that McGuinness lived in Romania in the years leading up to the revolution, and this is no surprise as there is an authenticity here that could only have come from some level of inside knowledge. Full review...
Winnie Under the Sea by Valerie Thomas and Korky Paul
It is holiday time and Winnie the Witch has found a little island with blue sea, golden sand and coconut trees. She and Wilbur, her cat, arrive and find accommodation in a comfortable hut on the water's edge – just perfect for swimming. Winnie dives in and soon sees the most amazing fish, turtles, dolphin and coral. She wants Wilbur to see all these lovely things but, being a cat, he is not particularly keen on getting wet. However, Winnie has an idea and, waving her wand shouts 'Abracadabra' and turns Wilbur into a cat-fish. Winnie turns herself into an octopus and the two of them have a wonderful underwater adventure, although it almost goes disastrously wrong when Winnie loses her wand. Maybe she needs to think of an alternative way of exploring under the sea? Full review...
Night Road by Kristin Hannah
Lexi and Mia are best friends, and Mia and Zach are twins, and Lexi and Zach hardly hate each other either. They're not so much a couple of friends or brother and sister as they are a circle that goes round and round and never ends, and despite mother Jude's initial reservations, their unconventional arrangement seems to work. It's not like she's not got enough on her plate anyway. It's senior year of high school and the pressure of college applications and future plans is driving them all crazy, but when an event on the eve of graduation changes all their lives forever, there's nothing they wouldn't give to return to those stress-filled days of the before to escape the after that now torments them. Full review...
The Hollow: The Hidden by Jessica Verday
Abbey loves Caspian more than ever, and with her death apparentlyapproaching, she knows they will be able to be together forever soon. But why is he growing so distant? Is there something the revenants who are protecting her aren't telling her? And can anyone keep her safe from the rogue revenant Vincent, who attacked her previously? Full review...
Untying the Knot by Linda Gillard
I've often wondered why it's not axiomatic that a man should stand by his woman – although perhaps it couldn't be set to music quite so easily – but Fay had failed to stand by her man. To make it worse, she was an army wife and they just don't desert – and Magnus was a hero. He'd been in bomb disposal and despite being blown up had briefed his number two about the bomb before he was taken off to hospital. He was good-looking, charismatic – and divorced. Fay knew that marrying Magnus had been a mistake – but she also admitted that the biggest mistake of all was divorcing him. Full review...
The Importance of Being Myrtle by Ulrika Jonsson
title will help to draw readers in, I think. The blurb on the back cover suggests a cosy, domestic read. I was looking forward to it. We initially get all the sorry details leading up to Austin's untimely death. On the local bus, of all places, as he made his way to work. A kindly Italian/Australian man called Gianni sees it all happening (in fact Austin dies in his arms). We also get a lot of background info on Gianni, right at the very beginning, which I thought slowed up the story somewhat. Full review...
Emerald by Karen Wallace
Emerald and her brother Richard never understood why her father decided that after his death they would go and live with their uncle and aunt at Hawkstone Hall, even though their mother was still alive. Still, she had always been a cold woman, more interested in profit than people, and they soon forgot her. Until, that is, the day she wrote to Uncle Charles saying that Emerald was to marry Lord Suckley, and that he was already on his way to the Hall to inspect his new bride. Full review...
Ssh! Lose Weight in 20 Minutes by Alex Buckley
After years of limited exercise combined with a love of fine food, Alex Buckley was known to his friends as Fat Al. He followed a number of diet plans to no effect before coming up with his own solution, which is outlined in this book. His message is basically an extended version of the long standing sound advice that to lose weight you need to eat less and exercise more. Buckley's suggestions break this broad truth down into achievable micro steps. He provides tips on ways of sustaining weight loss by very gradually changing your behaviour. The book does not offer detailed recipes or a programme of food exclusion. It is very much about advice on small day to day choices and gradual change, written in a straightforward and easily accessible style. Full review...
The Red Thread by Ann Hood
The Red Thread Adoption Agency has been successfully placing abandoned Chinese girls with loving American families, desperate for children, for many years when we join them. Named for the mythical Chinese belief that people who are destined to be together are connected by an invisible red thread, an immense amount of work goes in from both countries to make the process as smooth and straightforward as possible, and to ensure the matches are, if not magical, then at least perfect. Maya, the agency’s owner, knows all the children she has placed and spends a great deal of time with the prospective parents before they come anywhere near their potential daughters. Full review...
Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kohler
There is no denying that the Brontë family lived an interesting life. While some authors' lives are shrouded in mystery, with their characters far better known than they themselves are, that's not really the case with the Brontës. Various biographers have, over the years, provided a clear picture of 19th century Yorkshire life thanks to a wealth of original letters and diaries preserved from the time. This makes Kohler's choice of topic slightly odd. Rather than an attempt to imagine the unknown lives of the sisters, it is a cobbling together of facts and assumptions that have been in the public arena for some time. For anyone who knows anything about the Brontës, it really is nothing new, and that's a shame. Full review...
Berlin at War: Life and Death in Hitler's Capital, 1939-45 by Roger Moorhouse
Berlin at War is an account of the day to day lives of the ordinary people of Berlin, the then capital of Nazi Germany, during the Second World War. Berlin was heavily bombed throughout much of the war, and suffered greatly as the symbolic target of Allied forces at the end. Full review...
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
Karou's friends think she's normal. They assume, however often she tells them that her bright blue hair grows that colour, that she dyes it. They think her frequent errands are just normal everyday things to earn money. They believe the snake-bodied being she draws in her sketchbook is a figment of her imagination. They're wrong. Full review...
On A Stick! by Matt Armendariz
There's something rather fun about eating your food off a stick. The first thing that springs to my mind is candy floss (I never buy it when it's in a bag...sacrilegious!) but if you think about it there are lots of things you can eat off a stick, both savoury and sweet. And the author of this cookery book would have you believe that everything tastes better when it's eaten off a stick! Full review...
The Secrets of Pain by Phil Rickman
It's a freezing winter's night and a couple of the locals are driving home when they come across a strange and disturbing incident. They don't know what to make of it but as the SAS have a training presence in the area Gomer and Danny put it down to exercises and breath a sigh of relief. It's anything for a quiet life round these parts and thanks to Rickman's excellent writing, we soon see that these men, Gomer especially, are characters in themselves. Plenty of personality. Once seen, difficult to forget. And I didn't want to forget them. They also speak in the local dialect which comes across very well indeed. Full review...
Bred of Heaven: One man's quest to reclaim his Welsh roots by Jasper Rees
Jasper Rees is a Welshman in his dreams. Despite his surname, he was born in England, but wishes he was from Wales. Seeking to find his inner Welshman – he's sure he has one as he had Welsh grandparents – he journeys around the land of his fathers trying to work out what it means to be Welsh. Full review...
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The Night Circus moves from town to town; appearing with no warning, no announcements. The attractions seem impossible – a carousel with breathing animals, handkerchiefs that turn into birds in front of the watchful eyes of the audience, doors that appear and disappear. In the middle of it all are Celia, the daughter of a famous illusionist, and Marco, the apprentice of a mysterious magician. From a young age the lovers have been destined to compete against each other using their unusual skills to win a prize that neither of them understands; and an end that will leave only one standing. Full review...
The Drake Chronicles: Bleeding Hearts by Alyxandra Harvey
Things in Violet Hill are not looking good at the moment. The small town is practically over run by the vicious Hel-Blar vampires: not the civilised, friendly (and hot) variety that Lucy is used too – these are feral, and attack indiscriminately, humans and vampires alike. Full review...
The Expendable Man by Dorothy B Hughes
Dorothy B Hughes (1904-93) took a journalism degree in Kansas City, Missouri and started her distinguished career with a prize-winning book of poems. Her first hard-boiled thriller appeared in 1940 and it was followed by more than a dozen in the next decade. Three were made into noir films and in 1944 Hughes went to Hollywood to assist Hitchcock on his film, Spellbound. Here she met Ingrid Bergman and consequently Humphrey Bogart came to buy the film rights to one of her novels. Full review...
Man in a Mud Hut by Ian Mathie
Ian Mathie deserves a wider audience. I can't understand why he hasn't been leapt upon by Radio 4 , Saga Magazine, the Sunday papers, the Daily Mail, Uncle Tom Cobley and all since the publication of Bride Price in January. Here is a fine new Voice who is completely his own man. His writing is spare, uncomplicated and unassuming. Now Ian Mathie has taken a dusty-dry civil servant and turned him into a hero. Desmond's first visit to Africa is the theme of the dramatic Man in a Mud Hut story. Set in the 1970's, the intrigue and suspense sort of reminded me of The Spy who came in from the Cold - and it all happened. Full review...
The Campus Trilogy by David Lodge
Somewhere along the line the word "vintage" stopped meaning simply the wine crop of any given year, and started to mean the wine of a particularly good year, and then to mean anything of a past year that was (is) of outstanding quality. Such is the mutability of language. Full review...
Elbow Grease: How our Grandmothers and Great-Grandmothers Kept House by Jacqueline Percival
Sometimes I look at the housework that needs to be done and it seems like a mountain that has to be climbed. It's not until I look back at the work that my mother, her mother and even my great grandmother had to do to keep the house clean and free of pests as well as doing all the laundry that I realise that my problems are more of a molehill and a lot less strenuous than their daily grind ever was. Jacqueline Percival has taken a look back at the way that things really were for the women who went before us – and in those days housework generally was down to the woman in the house. Full review...
