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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Sammy the Shy Kitten by Holly Webb
An adorably, warm and cute story about what happens when Emma falls in love with a tiny sweet feral kitten whom she names Sammy. To persuade Mum and Dad to let her keep him she must learn all she can about taming wild kittens – and, of course, win little Sammy's confidence and trust. Full review...
History's People: Personalities and the Past by Margaret MacMillan
According to the 19th century historian Thomas Carlyle, 'the history of the world is but the biography of great men'. Historian Margaret McMillan acknowledges in her introduction to this volume, based on a series of recent lectures, that there is a long-standing debate in history over whether events are moved either by individuals or by economic and social changes or technological and scientific advances, and suggests that there is no right or wrong answer. Full review...
I Love You More and More by Nicky Benson and Jonny Lambert
I'm something of a connoisseur when it comes to books about bears. I suppose it probably started with Winnie the Pooh, and my dad doing all the funny voices, but even these days I find I am irresistibly drawn to stories with bears in, and this one did not disappoint. If you're looking for a good old pull-at-the-heartstrings read for cozy afternoons with your momentarily quiet little one, then this is a good place to start. Full review...
Wolfie the Bunny by Ame Dyckman and Zachariah OHora
It may be that you are on the lookout for a useful picture book that deals with sibling rivalry in a helpful way. It may be that you have a wolf or rabbit obsessed toddler. Or it may just be that you like a good story that's fun to read. Fortunately for you, this book will cover all of those requirements! Wolfie the bunny arrives in the Bunny family's lives in a rather suspicious way, when he is left on their doorstep in a basket. Mama and Papa Bunny are immediately charmed by their new baby, but big sister Dot remains alarmed, shouting out 'He's going to eat us all up!' but receiving no response from her smitten parents! Full review...
Seeing the War: The Stories Behind the Famous Photographs from World War II by David P Colley
As anybody could tell, a still photograph is only part of the truth, if that. There is a beforehand we don't see, and an after we can only fantasise about unless we know otherwise. Take the famous image of wartime grunts pushing the flag pole upright – an icon of the War in the Pacific for the US soldiers, and the films made about Iwo Jima since. But other images of the war have been just as long-lasting, and the people in the photos don't always have movies made of their full story arc. This book is a collection of the images, and a corrective to that narrative lack, giving much more of a full biography with which to pay tribute. Full review...
Ralf by Jean Jullien
I'm rather partial to sausage dogs. I met one in Japan once who I would quite happily have tucked into my suitcase to sneak back home. Ralf the sausage dog is just as endearing as these pups usually are, although he is also just as troublesome. For a little dog, he manages to take up quite a lot of space, make a lot of noise, and generally make a nuisance of himself (as most dogs do really). Yet when suddenly the family find themselves in great danger, it is Ralf who saves the day! Full review...
The House of Eyes (Wesley Peterson) by Kate Ellis
D I Wesley Peterson wasn't too worried when Darren Hatman reported his daughter missing. She'd been working at Eyecliffe Castle and it wasn't difficult to sense that she'd been annoying the other staff with the stories of what she'd be doing when she got her modelling contract. There was just one point which left Peterson uneasy: Hatman claimed that Leanne had been stalked by a photographer and the case was obviously worth an enquiry or two. Eyecliffe Castle had been home to the wealthy D'Arles family, but was now a luxury hotel and spa, with the last remaining member of the family living in the Dower House in the grounds. Then Darren was found brutally murdered in the grounds of the castle: was it possible that Leanne had met a similar fate, and if so, why? Full review...
Time Travelling with a Hamster by Ross Welford
Meet Al Chaudhury. He lives, unknowingly, among a family of time travellers. His grandfather has such a brilliant memory he can use a mind palace to store anything and everything, and could tell you what happened on every day of his life, and take himself back with his thoughts. His father knows the starlight at night is years old, and is a snapshot of a sun that is remote both in time and space. But even harder to fathom is that Al's father is a real time traveller, and is going to speak from beyond the grave, and send Al on a true mission through time, one that will either save his life, or completely ruin all Al's forevers, for, er, for ever. Full review...
Odd Socks by Michelle Robinson and Rebecca Ashdown
Socks, eh? They never used to trouble me, and would return from the washing machine in pairs, just as they had entered. I never fully understood the whole Land-of-missing-socks thing. Suki and Sosh are Mr and Mrs Sock, a matching pair who live happily together in the sock drawer. They too have never visited the Land-of-missing-socks. See? It's not just me. But something even worse is about to happen to tear this couple apart. Something quite horrible: Suki has a hole. Full review...
Unicorn in New York: Louie Lets Loose! by Rachel Hamilton
Louie's parents are worried when Louie announces he wants to leave home to enrol at the New York School of Performing Arts. He's a unicorn and they can't believe he'll be happy without the sunlit meadows, enchanted waterfalls and beautiful maidens of Story Land. But, like all good parents, they accept that Louie must make his own way in the world. Luckily Louie always looks for the positive in life – a skill that's going to prove essential when he arrives in New York. Full review...
Alpha: Directions by Jens Harder
So, people might still ask me, why do I turn to graphic novels – aren't visual books with limited writing more suited to young people? Yeah, right – try pawning this off on juvenile audiences and the semi-literate. If you can't kill that cliché off with pages such as these I don't know what will work. I know the book isn't designed to be a message to people in the debate about the literary worth of graphic novels, but one side-effect of it is surely an engagement with that argument. What it is designed to be is a complete history of everything else – and in covering every prehistoric moment, it does just that, and absolutely brilliantly. Full review...
The Postmistress of Nong Khai by Frank Hurst
Mike Rawlins' rise through the ranks in the investigation department of Customs and Excise has been steady, culminating in his dream posting: attachment to the British Embassy, Thailand. It gets even better when he realises a name from his past is also operating out of the country on the other side of the law. Mike's attempts to nail him over the years have become personal and now, thanks to local informant or 'Postmistress' Lek, prosecution is a possibility. What Mike doesn't realise is the cost the chase will exact… not yet anyway. Full review...
Hieronymus by Marcel Ruijters and Laura Watkinson (translator)
This is a book for those who find it amusing that a biography of someone who has been dead 500 years is called 'unauthorised'. This is a book where the detail is in the devil – people pissing in the street; the locals baiting blind people armed with cudgels in a pit with a pig, often failing to whack the beast and hitting their colleagues by mistake; farting demons visiting the sleeper. This is a book for those who don't mind a spot of ribaldry, an affront to religious piety or suchlike in their graphic novels. Whether or not this is a book for those seeking a biography of Hieronymus Bosch remains to be seen. Full review...
Hitler's First Victims: And One Man's Race for Justice by Timothy W Ryback
Four people, taken to a sheltered corner of the place they're trapped, and shot in the back of the head by fresh-faced guards and soldiers with far too little experience of anything, let alone treating other men on the wrong end of a gun. Three people unceremoniously dumped, like slain game, on the floor of a nearby ammunition shed – the fourth had two hellish days with at least one bullet wound to the brain before he passed away. All four over-worked from being in a Nazi establishment, all four probably killed merely for being Jewish. Not a remarkable story, it's horrid to think, due to there being about six million cases of this happening. What is remarkable about this instance is that it was the first, at the incredible time of April 1933. And if it seems the first in a long chain of such murders, you would think people might have noticed that at the time, and tried to do something about it. Well, they did. Full review...
The Cinematic Legacy of Frank Sinatra by David Wills
Oh, the modern celebrity – they don't make them like they used to. Anodyne, uniform in (lack of) thought and body shape, and far, far too prominent in the lives of too many for too little. If they're ever expected to multi-task it will entail them being much acclaimed for doing one day job to a mediocre standard, as well as reading out someone's voice-over for a BBC3/Channel 4/Channel 5 clip show – oh, and if someone deems them really talented they get to mime to someone else's record, in a lip dub smash or whatever the heck they're calling it. Followed by panto. It is a shameful reflection on us, and on the real celebrities we used to have, such as Frank Sinatra. By the time he was starting in film he was well-known for a character and singing talent that was making him a star already, even if, as this book proves, he had more or less the looks of a young Lee Evans. By the time he was finished he'd acted straight, comic, romantic, criminal, sung his heart out, danced – even learnt the drums for one role. He had Golden Globes, an Oscar – and he directed one film as well as produced several others. In an age when the world is up in arms at the passing of anyone remotely famous, what tribute can we give to a great such as he was? Full review...
Mr Horton's Violin by Wenhua Wang, Amann Wang and Yu Yan Chen (translator)
Meet Mr Horton. He is one of the world's most famous and rich musical instrument players, and has done it all – except, that is, stumble on a music tree. You have to stumble on them, for not carpenters, not sculptors, not even simple woodsmen would give them a second look and think of them as anything special. But when Mr Horton does find one he is able to fashion the best, most magical violin imaginable out of its wood. The only problem after that is working out who deserves to play it… Full review...
The Chief Cellist by Wenhua Wang, Amann Wang and Yu Yan Chen (translator)
Meet the Chief. A new cellist in a quite horrible orchestra, he has suddenly turned their fortunes – and his – round. He is now a superstar, and asking for more and more grandeur and help in his life. But one night, when his chauffeur doesn't turn up for him after yet one more sterling performance, he finds himself alone in a world that doesn't care how good a cellist he is, but one where destiny might just depend on him learning the power of teamwork… Full review...
Paddington and the Disappearing Sandwich by Michael Bond and R W Alley
Paddington has a list - a list of shapes which he has to find. The first one was easy - it was a rectangle and he spotted that the front door was a rectangle as he closed it on his way out. There was another shape ticked off as he walked away - all the paving stones were squares! At the corner of the road there was a 'Men at Work' sign (or 'roadworks ahead' if you prefer not to be sexist) and this was a triangle and there, round the roadworks were some cones! There are still quite a few shapes on his list though - an oval, a circle, a star, a diamond and a heart. It was the heart which would prove most difficult to track down and I'm not going to tell you how Paddington did it, but there just might be a clue in the title. Full review...
The Child's Secret by Amanda Brooke
There are obvious suspects in any missing child case, with the parents often at the top of the list. In the case of 8 year old Jasmine, though, there's someone else who catches the police's eye: local park worker Sam who has something of an unconventional relationship with the girl. Full review...
Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo by Michael Pronko
Last year I was lucky enough to review Beauty and Chaos: Slices and Morsels of Tokyo Life, Michael Pronko's first essay collection about his adopted city. I found that book to be full of insight and variety, so was delighted to be approached about reviewing his latest book, Motions and Moments, which is a third set of essays (after Tokyo's Mystery Deepens). Again the book is compiled from Pronko's Newsweek Japan articles, this time from 2011 onwards. All of the pieces have been reworked, but most of them remain short; 'Tokyo life is about spatial limitations,' Pronko wryly comments, and it's appropriate for his pieces to reflect that. Full review...
Love and Lies: And Why You Can't Have One Without the Other by Clancy Martin
Lying is wrong and the last people you would lie to willingly are the ones you love the most – or so you would like to think. In Love and Lies: And Why You Can't Have One Without the Other, Clancy Martin, a philosophy professor, self-confessed expert liar, and serial groom, sets out on a mission to disprove the central beliefs we hold with respect to, no more and no less than, our own morality. Full review...
Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit
It's Poland in 1939. And Anna's linguistics professor father is about to be rounded up in the Nazi purge of intellectuals. Knowing this is likely to happen, he leaves her in the care of a friend for the day. When her father doesn't return to collect her, the frightened friend loses his nerve and abandons Anna to a new and dangerous world. Anna is just seven years old and will never see her father again. Full review...
Exposure by Helen Dunmore
London - 1960. With the Cold War at its height, spy fever fills the newspapers, the political establishment knowing how and where to bury its secrets. A sensitive file goes missing, and Simon Callington is accused of passing information to the Soviets, and is arrested. His wife Lily suspects that this imprisonment is part of a cover-up, and that those higher than Simon are fighting to prevent their own downfall. Knowing that both she and her children too are in danger, Lily must fight to save Simon and protect her family. Little does she know that Simon is hiding many things from her, including a crime that may carry with it an even greater penalty. Full review...
Front Lines by Michael Grant
1942: Hitler is pushing his way ever further, the USA adds its strength to the Alliance and women are allowed to fight in the military for the first time. Rio Richlin’s sister has already died in the war, Frangie Marr is desperate for a way to keep her family’s heads above water and Rainy Schulterman wants to kill the man who is murdering Jews. All three go to war and all three are changed. Although they do they do not start together, their paths intersect as they all take on roles that leave more scars than expected. Full review...
All The Rage by Courtney Summers
In a small town, where everyone knows everything about everyone else, a teenage girl is raped. All The Rage is as simple as that, and yet it is so much more complicated too. It touches upon the blame that is laid at the victim's feet; the ways in which survivors cope with the days and weeks and years after such an ordeal; the idea that, while it changes you, it cannot fully erase what makes you you. Full review...
The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes's first novel since he won the Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes is a fictionalised biography of Russian composer Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (1906–75). Knowing Barnes's penchant for stylistic experimentation, though, this was never going to be a straightforward, chronological life story. Instead, as Barnes so often does, he sets up a tripartite structure, focussing on three moments in Shostakovich's life when he has a reckoning with Power (always capitalised here). The title phrase helpfully spells out what the book is all about: 'Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time.' Full review...
Darkmouth: Worlds Explode by Shane Hegarty
It was bad enough when Finn was being trained by his dad to hunt the monsters known as Legends: at least there was someone around to rescue him if he messed up, and to apologise to the neighbours for the occasional dented car or broken window. And seeing as Finn isn't anywhere close to being the greatest hunter the world has ever seen (he'd much rather be a vet, not that anyone has ever asked his opinion on the matter), there's been lots of apologising to do. Lots and lots and lots. Full review...
