Book Reviews From The Bookbag
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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Trust by Mike Bullen
Greg and Amanda are happy. Unmarried, but together thirteen years and with two young daughters, they are very much in love. Dan and Sarah aren't so fortunate. Their marriage is going through the motions, and they're staying together for the sake of their troubled teenage son. Following a business conference away from home, one bad decision sends a happy couple into turmoil, and turns an unhappy couple into love's young dream. As secrets and betrayals threaten to send both relationships out of control, there's only one thing that can keep everything from falling apart: Trust Full review...
Liquidator by Andy Mulligan
Ladies and gentlemen, please turn off your phones and suspend your disbelief as you enter the crazy, exciting and thoroughly silly world of the new book by the fantabulous Andy Mulligan. You will encounter ruthless villains, non-stop danger, at least one near-death experience and a rather jolly lorry driver. Where does all this happen, you ask? In the mountain-top fastness of some evil spy? In the secret laboratory of a crazed wizard? Nope – somewhere way, way more dangerous. Work experience. Full review...
Doctor Who: The Dangerous Book of Monsters by Justin Richards and Dan Green
It's imperative you keep up with The Doctor, in both senses – meaning in case the first thing he tells you to do is Run! and in the sense of following all his various adventures and maintaining knowledge of what's what and who he's faced, enemy-wise. One great way to be enemy wise is to peruse this book, which really is a great present for the young fan – and of course a life-saving manual for when you yourself find sharks in the fog, gas-mask wearing boys sans their mothers or indeed gigantic Cyberking dreadnought spacecraft. Honestly, why this is classed as a fiction title I have no idea… Full review...
Puppy Love (Dork Diaries) by Rachel Renee Russell
Things have changed drastically in the world of Nikki Maxwell. Her arch nemesis has suddenly upped sticks and moved school – well, the posher place will only suit her well. Nikki now has a sort of empty feeling, though – nobody is there to make her feel pestered, let down, het up and stressed. Although something is about to do just that and more – the discovery, outside the sanctuary her crush volunteers at, of an abandoned mother dog with her seven puppies. Looking after them until the place even has space for the new arrivals is going to fill her world for the next few days – and the adventure is going to be just as readable as all the other books in this series. Full review...
Life Below Stairs: True Lives of Edwardian Servants by Alison Maloney
Life in Edwardian times is currently a popular subject, thanks in no small part to that period drama currently showing its final series on ITV. Life Below Stairs examines the subject in greater detail, looking at documents and memoirs from the time to discover what life was really like for those in service. We learn about the strict hierarchy in the household and the duties expected of each individual. We see how much each member of staff was paid and how workers were hired (and in many cases, fired) from their positions. Welcome to a slice of Edwardian life, served up with a delicious mix of period illustrations and newspaper clippings Full review...
A Boy Called Christmas by Matt Haig
Have you ever wondered what Father Christmas was like as boy? How he came to live in the Far North surrounded by elves? Where the idea for giving presents came from? Why he wears a red hat? If you're interested in any of these questions, then 'A Boy Called Christmas' is the perfect book for you. Full review...
The Winter Place by Alexander Yates
Axel and Tess live in rural New York state with a father obsessed with mediaeval reconstructions. They have a knight for a father! This eccentricity is both entertaining and a good thing - because Sam is the only parental figure in their lives. Axel and Tess's mother died when Axel was born. Tess is just moving into oppositional adolescence. She and Sam enjoy sparring over the care of Axel, who has inherited a rare form of muscular dystrophy from his late mother. Axel is, well, an individual child, currently haunted by a mischievous wheelchair only he can see. The pesky thing follows him everywhere. Full review...
Back to the Future: The Ultimate Visual History by Michael Klastorin and Randal Atamaniuk
Well, thankfully I have never had to sit through Jaws 19. Of all the perks invented for the heady days of October 2015 by the middle film in the Back to the Future trilogy, that was one of the least inviting. I've never actually seen that middle film, either – really liked the original and still do, had the middle one pass me by totally, then saw the third so often as a cinema steward (shows my age!) I was word perfect on the script. The threesome is one of a most wholesome kind – the restoration of family values through grabbing hold of your own destiny by the horns, the application of science to save the day over brawns and shooting people up, the habitually dung-filled comeuppance of the baddies throughout time – it's no wonder that the trilogy is much loved. And as it's the most pictorial and detailed guide to their creation on paper imaginable, this volume will follow it into many hearts. Full review...
The Soul of Discretion (Simon Serrailler) by Susan Hill
The story begins with hints: an old lady hears children screaming in the middle of the night, sees children being bundled away from a property she thought was uninhabited. A teacher is horrified by a drawing from a child which suggests that she is aware of brutal sexual activity. For Simon Serrailler the knowledge had come more directly: he was approached to go undercover in prison with the aim of getting close to Will Fearnley, a convicted paedophile who had consistently refused to divulge any information about his contacts. He was currently in a therapy centre and is was here that DCS Serrailer went as Johno Miles, also a convicted paedophile. Full review...
Splinter the Silence by Val McDermid
I should probably be ashamed to say that I only know Val McDermid's Tony Hill series from the TV adaption Wire in the Blood. And I'm afraid to say that if the latest offering is par for the series, then I'll remain content with that. Full review...
QI: The Third Book of General Ignorance by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, James Harkin and Andrew Hunter Murray
Well done, Hartlepool. You didn't put on trial and kill a shipwrecked monkey thinking it a Napoleonic spy – any more than the several other places thusly accused ever did. Well done, Italy, for making the ciabatta such a global phenomenon it seems like a traditional foodstuff, even if it was invented in 1982. And well done to that famous ice hockey player, Charles Darwin – who was probably playing it, seeing as it was a British invention, long before the Canadians ever realised they might be good at it. Yes, for a book that spends a lot of its time saying 'this didn’t happen,' 'hoojamaflip didn't do this,' and 'that was never thus', it's one that's incredibly easy to be most positive about. Full review...
Aerodynamics of biscuits by Clare Helen Walsh and Sophia Touliatou
Oliver knows he shouldn't be skulking, sneaking and creeping around in the middle of the night. But even good little boys sometimes do things they shouldn't when they're hungry. And it's just as well he does. Without Oliver, the pirate mice wouldn't be able to use the biscuits they've stolen to build an aerodynamic rocket to take them to the moon. And without Oliver they would still be stranded on the cheesy moon unable to get home. Full review...
The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson
This is the inaugural volume of a new series of Shakespeare retellings from Hogarth Press. Still to come: Margaret Atwood on The Tempest, Howard Jacobson on The Merchant of Venice and Anne Tyler on The Taming of the Shrew, among others. How is this first book? It's pretty good as Winterson novels go, incorporating Shakespearean themes of time, deception and adoption and turning bears and statues into metaphors while remaining loyal to the essence of the plot. Yet two crucial elements of the play don't make sense in a modern setting, and in the end I felt this added nothing to my enjoyment of the original. Full review...
Stitches in Time: The Story of the Clothes We Wear by Lucy Adlington
Stitches in Time is a lively history of clothing. Riffling through the wardrobes of years gone by, costume historian Lucy Adlington reveals the stories underneath the clothes we wear in this tour of the history of fashion, ranging from ancient times to the present day. With beautiful illustrations and full colour photographs, Stitches in Time is a reminder of how the way we dress is inextricably bound up with considerations of aesthetics, sex, gender, class and lifestyle – and offers the reader the chance to appreciate the extraordinary qualities of the clothing we wear, and the rich history it has led. Full review...
Vortex... the Endgame by Matt Carrell
In 2014 the financial markets were tumbling in Bangkok. The recession was deepening and unemployment figures were rising. The recession wasn't affecting all layers of society equally and in consequence the government was facing a financial and a social crisis. It would take little to spark street violence equal to that of 2010. But not everyone viewed the situation with dismay: this was exactly what Tanawat Chanpol had been hoping for. If all went according to plan - and it was planned - his employer, businessman Narong Sunarawani, would be brought to power by popular acclamation as the only man who could save the country. It would take months and a lot of hard work though. Full review...
Slade House by David Mitchell
Once every nine years Jonah and Norah Greyer entertain a guest; each time a different person… or persons. Each visitor walks through the small black door of Slade House for various reasons of their own. Or at least they think they know why they're there but only Jonah and Norah know the real reason – the only reason. Full review...
The Psychology of Overeating by Kima Cargill
As a nation, we are not the same as we used to be. We eat more, both as in more often and as in more of a serving size. And we eat worse. Processed foods. Sugary drinks. It’s not really news. As a result, our waistlines are larger, our blood pressure is higher, and our sugar levels are whoooosh. But it’s not just about the food. This book takes an in depth and incredibly interesting look at our lives as a whole, to show how the modern culture of consumerism shows up in every part of our day to day living and explains, to quite a significant degree, why many of us are overeating and why it is so hard to stop. Full review...
The Dress Shop Of Dreams by Menna Van Praag
Cambridge is a city of winding streets and cobbled alleyways and in such a street you will find A Stich In Time, a tiny dress shop filled to bursting with dresses that will take your breath away. Etta Sparks spends her days crafting gowns from jewel-coloured velvets and beaded silks that are unlike any dresses you have seen before; once you try one of Etta's creations on - and with a few stitches from her expert and rather magical needle - these incredible, amazing garments have the power to reach within your soul and extract your deepest desire and hidden-away dreams. Full review...
Dark Corners by Ruth Rendell
Carl Martin was in the fortunate position of having just had his first novel published and inheriting his late father's house in Maida Vale. His father had accumulated a collection of homeopathic remedies which really should have been thrown out, but Carl had other things on his mind and never got round to it. There was his girlfriend Nicola, work to start on his second novel and he wanted to let the top floor of his house. Authors are not that well off, you see and he needed some ready money coming in. In addition to being a bit remiss about the contents of the medicine cabinet he should have been a bit more careful about who he took on as a tenant. Full review...
The Iron Man by Ted Hughes and Andrew Davidson
Where had he come from? Nobody knows. But's it obvious when the Iron Man came from – it really does smack of the beginnings of the environmental movement in the two decades after WWII. There's the nuclear element to the story, which is certainly there, even if I can never be sure whether that is the title character or the other one that turns up for the second half. But at the same time, there is also the idea that such a book doesn't really need to be analysed, explained away and diminished thusly, when it provides some of the most enjoyable, clear and simple yet highly emotive writing for the young audience, that has made it a classic since its inception. Full review...
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
On December 3rd 1976 a group of armed men go to Bob Marley's Jamaican home in Hope Road on a mission to kill 'The Singer'. No one will be arrested for it but that doesn't mean their lives afterwards will be normal. This is a total fictionalisation of their story and therefore the story of the people of the Jamaican ghettoes: the politics, the unrest, the gang warfare and the death. Full review...
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Willem, JB, Malcolm and Jude don't have a lot in common apart from their friendship. They gravitated together at college and remain close as they become successful in careers as different as the theatre and architecture. However even hopes for successful future can't erase the blight of the past for one of them. Jude is physically disabled from a cause that isn't genetic or congenital. In fact the cause isn't even something he's shared with the other three. The events around it stem back to his childhood and haunt each thought and action he takes as well as his ability to take them. Full review...
Sweet Danger by Margery Allingham
Sweet Danger is the fifth book in Margery Allingham's Campion series, which has our eponymous gentleman-adventurer on a quest to find the rightful heir of a suddenly-valuable principality on the Adriatic Sea known as Averna. The British Government want proof of ownership and this, of course, involves overcoming several obstacles, including a curious riddle, collecting various items and keeping one step ahead of the enemy. The quest soon becomes a race against time, when the villains, led by Machiavellian schemer Brett Savanake, start to close in on our heroes. Full review...
The Big, Big Bing Book! by Lucy Murphy, Freddie Hutchins, Neil Dunnicliffe and Stella Gurney
We've all seen books described as big. It usually means that the book is a bit bigger than usual, or thicker, or it's a bind up of some previously-published books. That's not the case with The Big, Big Bing Book! It could well be bigger than your toddler at nearly two feet high and over fifteen inches wide and weighing in at well over a kilo. You need space to open it. This is not the book you take along on a trip just chance a little distraction is needed from the Bingster. It might be a book which is pored over - it's almost certainly going to be a book which is crawled over as that's likely to be the only way that your toddler is going to be able to give the content the attention which they will feel that it so richly deserves. Full review...
