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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The Revenge of the Ballybogs by Siobhan Rowden
Not much has changed in Barnaby's world since the first book in this series. His grandmother is still smelly, burpy, purple and a pickler on an industrial scale. Barnaby is at last working alongside her as opposed to hating her, but not everything is running completely smoothly, and Barnaby still doesn't know everything there is to know about his heritage – either the pickle factory he is supposed to inherit, or the bogle blood his unusual background has left him with. These short, dirty, hairy, stinking critters live in a world of their own underneath an unusual nearby bog – when they're not invading people's homes and causing mischief. Once again, however much Barnaby is reluctant to, he is forced to enter their world in an effort to solve a major calamity in his family, but this time without the help of his mother – for someone or something has kidnapped her… Full review...
How To Scare The Pants Off Your Pets (Ghost Buddy) by Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver
Billy is the only person who can see the ghost of Hoover Porterhouse the Third that he shares a bedroom with. While nobody else knows about the phantom's existence, Billy certainly knows about his character – his arrant braggadocio and the many self-serving rules he demands he lives his afterlife by. The problem is that that same lack of respect and responsibility is what is keeping Hoover in Billy's life and not moving on, and his attitude is so bad he's been grounded by the Higher-Ups in charge of such things. Billy's not one to live with an annoyance like that, though, and decides to prove the Hoove can be responsible – and caring for a pet should be the obvious proof with which to start… Full review...
Lenin's Kisses by Yan Lianke
Yan Lianke's 2004 novel, Lenin's Kisses, newly and beautifully translated by Carlos Rojas, is a rare and fascinating example, not just of Chinese fiction from a writer living and working in China, but also a book that has won literary awards (the prestigious Chinese Lao She Literary Award), now available in English. In many respects, the fact that this book won such a literary prize is somewhat surprising - not I hasten to add because of any lack of quality - but because Lianke, who has previously sailed too close to the political wind for Chinese censors, here presents a not altogether flattering view of Chinese politics. It's a book that is literary with a capital L, and while the core of the plot is relatively simple, what makes this book so interesting is the structure and way the story is told. Full review...
Little Manfred by Michael Morpurgo
In The Imperial War Museum, a little wooden dog stands in a glass display case. He was donated to the museum in 2005 by a family who lived at a farm in Kent. The little dog was made from cast-off apple boxes by a German prisoner of war who worked at the farm. Full review...
Stick Dog by Tom Watson
'I Can’t Draw, Okay?' Tom Watson apologises in the opening chapter of Stick Dog. He then goes on to lay some ground rules with the reader, explaining that:
'....this Stick Dog story (with the bad pictures that my art teacher doesn’t like) will also be told in a way that I like (but my English teacher doesn’t).'
'Good deal?'
'Excellent. Let’s move on.'
'This is going to be fun.' Full review...
Transforming Pandora by Carolyn Mathews
When we first meet Pandora Armstrong in the spring of 2003 she's grieving for her husband, Mike, who had died just a few weeks before. It hadn't been his first heart attack and he had reduced his workload but this attack was fatal. He was only in his fifties and Pandora feels that he'd been snatched away from her as they'd only been married for a few years. When a friend suggests that she goes with her to an Evening of Clairvoyance she runs out of excuses to refuse and although she's not exactly convinced by what she hears there's a lingering doubt. A spirit voice mentioned her children and Pandora was adamant that she didn't have any children - it's actually quite a sore point - but that wasn't true of Mike. Full review...
The Wayward Gentleman: John Theophilus Potter and the Town of Haverfordwest by Patricia Watkins
In 1778 John Theophilus Potter (Theo to his friends) came to Haverfordwest from Dublin with a group of actors to put on two performances of Romeo and Juliet. A careless accident left him unable to return with the other players - and then he met Elizabeth Edwardes, from a family of local gentry. Friendship turned to love and whilst some in the town wondered (in a rather loud voice) that the Edwardes should allow Elizabeth's friendship with an actor, Theo was no strolling player without a penny to his name. He was a 'gentleman player' with a considerable fortune and a very respectable income. He was also a restless man, constantly driven to achieve. Full review...
The Technologists by Matthew Pearl
The year is 1868 and Boston is under threat from an evil genius who seems to have the uncanny ability to manipulate matter itself. The city has already experienced two attacks; the chaos in the harbour when the navigation instruments went awry and the eerie spectacle in the commercial quarter when every item of glass, including windows, eyeglasses, clocks and watches spontaneously melted. But are these attacks a prelude to something greater? Full review...
The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker
Sendker is German-born (Hamburg 1960) and worked as American correspondent for Stern (1990 to 95) and then as its Asian correspondent from '95 to '99. He now lives in Berlin. This probably gives him enough global insight to write about a US-born high flyer with an Asian heritage heading off to Burma to find out the truth of her father's disappearance. It probably also gives him the language skills to do it in English without recourse to a translator. Full review...
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
There’s a distressing moment in any long-term relationship where you realise that, in practice, happily ever after looks a lot like an eternity of small, snarling arguments about who forgot to buy food, who should take out the rubbish and who is responsible for that mouldering pile of clothes in the corner of the bedroom. Domestic bliss is often more like very polite guerrilla warfare between two people who love each other so much that they want to spend the rest of their lives fighting about it. You and your partner are absolutely in each other’s pockets – but no matter how close you are, there’s always one last barrier you can’t break down. You aren’t them, and they aren’t you, and so you can never truly know what’s really going on inside that well-known head. Full review...
The Engagement by Chloe Hooper
Chloe Hooper's gothic, psychological thriller concerns an affair between a thirty-something English girl, Liese, working in Australia at her uncle's real estate business and a blandly handsome Australian farmer, Alexander. Set over one weekend as Liese is heading to Alexander's remote family farm for the first time for a weekend of passion, this is a classic 'girl trapped in spooky house and situation' story with a dark, sexual twist. Liese, who trained as an interior architect, met Alexander while showing him around exclusive Melbourne properties and, has somehow managed to get herself into a situation whereby Alexander pays her for her attentions, believing that she is some kind of prostitute. He's even paying her handsomely for her time at the weekend. With debts of her own, Liese willingly encourages this perception with little idea of the problems to which this fantasy will lead. Full review...
School's Out! by Jack Sheffield
The beginning of September 1983 starts a new academic year for the village primary school of Ragley-on-the-Forest. Headmaster Jack Sheffield starts the autumn term with a skip in his step as he and wife Sally enjoy their new baby, John William despite the broken nights. What else will the year bring? The advent of a new teacher and a tragedy that strikes sorrow in the heart of the village reduces Jack's skip a bit but there are always moments to lift the mood; for instance, whatever it was that little Madonna Fazackerly did in her cat's ear. It's all there in the school's daily log; perhaps not the one that the inspectors see, you understand, all is explained in living detail here in Jack's memoir of life as a teacher and villager. Full review...
The Ambassador's Daughter by Pam Jenoff
In 1919 the Great War - the First World War - was over and all that was left was to work out the terms of the peace treaty. Margot Rosenthal accompanied her father, a diplomat, to Paris, where he was part of the German delegation and in the invidious position of being disliked by the French because he was the enemy and mistrusted by fellow members of the delegation because he was Jewish. They'd previously been in England where they'd simply been the enemy. Margot could have gone home to Berlin but that would have taken her back to her fiance, who'd been seriously injured in the war. She'd rather fallen into the engagement, feeling that it was what she ought to do. Passion played no part. Full review...
The Twyning by Terence Blacker
Efren is a nobody in the kingdom of rats till he witnesses the kidnapping of the king. His future changes in a moment as he's sent up to the human world to rescue him. Talking of humans, 11 year old Peter is abandoned by his parents and left to scrape a living from London's streets. His affinity with animals gives him the name 'Dogboy' and employment with rat catcher Bob and scientist Dr Ross-Gibbon. The Doctor's ambition is to encourage humanity to annihilate the rats by dragging them into a war. Efren and Dogboy, both insignificant in their own worlds, must make both man and rodent see sense; easier said than done. Full review...
The Smug Pug by Anna Wilson
We first met Pippa Peppercorn and the pooch-pampering parlour in The Poodle Problem and then in The Dotty Dalmatian. Pippa is a whole six months (and a little bit) older now but she still bounces off the page like a rubber ball with red pigtails. I did worry about her just a little bit as she didn't seem to have any friends of her own age. The elderly Mrs Fudge, the ladies who have their hair done at the salon and Raphael the postman are really no substitute for someone of your own age with whom you can have fun and giggles. And pass notes to each other in school - which is an essential part of growing up. Full review...
Flight of the Last Dragon by Robert Burleigh and Mary Grandpre
Told in rhyme, this is the tale of the very last dragon on earth. He hides away, deep underground, remembering the times when the dragons ruled the earth until one day a voice from the heavens calls him, summons him, up and away, to fly far, far into the sky and leave this world behind. I rather like the idea of dragons. They're one of those mythical creatures that I still sort of hope might actually be real! My daughter likes dragons too, although when she saw the title of this book she was prepared for a sad story, sensing that we weren't heading towards a happy ending. Full review...
The Princess and the Peas and Carrots by Harriet Ziefert and Travis Foster
Rosebud is a good girl, for the most part, neat and tidy and a happy little girl, at which times her daddy calls her Good Princess Rosebud. But then sometimes things go a little bit wrong, or they aren't quite as Rosebud likes them, so perhaps there's a hole in her tights or snow in her boots or, heavens above, her peas are touching her carrots on the plate at dinner time! When this happens Rosebud becomes Princess Fussy and my, doesn't everyone know about it! Full review...
Harbour Nocturne by Joseph Wambaugh
The Hollywood Station series is set (no prizes for guessing) in Hollywood. Hollywood is, almost by definition, a bit weird. A full moon is known as a Hollywood moon, because that's when all the weirdoes come out to play. But it's a district that needs to be policed like any other. It has its fair share of RTAs and domestics and sad and lonely people. Not for nothing has the night shift sergeant instituted pizza-rewarded awards for best 'True Hollywood Romance' or 'Quiet Desperation' reports from a given shift. You need a black sense of humour to work the mean streets. Full review...
The Dogs of Winter by Bobbie Pyron
Little Mishka finds his cosy world turned upside down after the death of his beloved Babushka Ina. Unable to cope, his desperate mother finds solace in the arms of an abusive, alcoholic boyfriend and things go from bad to worse. When his mother mysteriously disappears, five year old Mishka flees to the heart of the city, where he joins up with a gang of street children, begging and stealing to survive. Full review...
The Divorce of Henry VIII: The Untold Story by Catherine Fletcher
Henry VIII’s protracted divorce from Catherine of Aragon, often referred to as ‘The King’s Great Matter’, has been described in detail many times before. In this book on the subject, the focus is on the role of Italian diplomat, Gregorio Casali, ‘our man in Rome’, as the hardback edition was titled. In the preface, Ms Fletcher explains that the average reader may be conversant with the basic facts of Henry and his six wives, but has probably never heard of Casali, who played a lengthy role in the proceedings. Full review...
The Prey by Andrew Fukuda
Having escaped the vampires hunting them on the boat left by the Scientists, Gene, Sissy and the boys make their way down the river and arrive at the Mission. Food is abundant, the place is peaceful, and the Elders promise them a trip on the next train to Civilisation. Gene and Sissy can hardly believe it. But it's soon apparent that the Mission is not all it seems and Gene begins to wonder if they haven't simply exchanged one hellhole for another. Although they find out a great deal more about the Scientist - he developed the Origin, a cure for vampirism - understanding his plans is as frustrating as ever. And with the vampires coming ever closer, even to the Mission itself, and the Elders making moves of their own, time is running out and Gene and Sissy must decide what to do... Full review...
The Silly Satsuma by Allan Plenderleith
Once there was a boy called Eric Greenbogle. I'd like to be able to tell you that he was a good boy, but that would be wrong. Eric was a bad boy and we all know what happens to bad boys on Christmas morning, don't we? Good boys (and girls) find lots of presents under the tree, but Father Christmas knows who has been good and who has been bad and Eric was about to be taught a lesson. There was just one present under the tree for Eric: a satsuma. Oh, there was something else - there was a note from Father Christmas explaining why there were no presents. Eric was furious. Eric cried, but then... Full review...
Dance of Shadows by Yelena Black
Vanessa is just one of many new students at the New York Ballet Academy - but while they're all trying to become the best dancer, she has her own reasons for being there. Three years ago her older sister disappeared from the school, and she's determined to find out what happened to Margaret. Can she find out? And will the two boys taking an interest in her, charismatic Zeppelin and incredibly intense Justin, help or hinder her search? Full review...
