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. We can even direct you to help for custom book reviews! Visit www.everychildareader.org to get free writing tips and www.genecaresearchreports.com will help you get your paper written for free.
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Notes from the Blockade by Lydia Ginzburg
With the scenes from war torn Syria brought to our screens every night, 'Notes from the blockade' is a timely book. It is the remarkable story of Lydia Ginzburg's survival during the 900-day siege of Leningrad during World War 2. With beautiful prose full of Russian melancholy and pragmatism, it details daily life in the besieged city. I have to confess that I found this to be one of the most moving books that it has ever been my pleasure to read. Pleasure may be a strange choice of words to describe a book recounting horrifying events, but it came from the lyrical quality of the writing. Ginzburg's prose is simply beautiful. Her descriptions of the minutiae of everyday life, as it descends into the abyss, are the most human I have encountered. It is this that leaves its mark long after the final page is turned. Full review...
Can You Say It Too? Brrr! Brrr! by Sebastien Braun
What most parents don't tell you is that they only have children for their own entertainment – the little tykes can be hilarious funny. One fun area is when a baby starts to learn words – DaDa, MaMa. Soon they pick up seemingly random words – Light! Yallow! (I think that is meant to be hello). Once they start looking intently at your lips as you speak you can start to guide them to words that you want them to use. For example, what language skills would they require if they visited Antarctica? Full review...
Thin Air by Michelle Paver
It's 1935 and the British raj still exists. It's also the golden age of mountaineering. Young doctor Stephen Pearce has just broken up with his fiancee and caused rather a stir in stuffy London society. Partly because he loves climbing and partly to get away from gossip, he joins his brother Kits on an expedition in the Himalayas to climb Kangchenjunga, the world's third highest mountain. They're following in the exact footsteps, route and all, of the notorious Lyell Expedition in which five men lost their lives. Full review...
The Hypnotist by Laurence Anholt
Pip's parents died in a traffic accident and he has been living in an orphanage ever since. He has only one treasured possession - a battered copy of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, given to him by his schoolteacher mother. That's how Pip got his name and he has a vague but treasured memory of his own father telling him of his own great expectations. It's thanks to his ability to read that Pip finds himself released into the care - well, sold, actually - of old Zachary, who wants a companion for his bedridden wife, Lilybelle, at Dead River Farm. Lilybelle likes being read to. Full review...
Holding by Graham Norton
The remote Irish village of Duneen has known little drama, and yet the inhabitants are troubled. Sergeant PJ Collins hasn't always been this overweight, mother-of-two Brid Riordan hasn't always been an alcoholic, and elegant Evelyn Ross hasn't always felt her life a total waste. When human remains are discovered on a farm, thought to be those of Tommy Burke, an ex lover of both Brid and Evelyn, the village's dark past begins to unravel. As the frustrated PJ struggles to solve a case for the first time in his life, he unearths a community's worth of anger, resentment, secrets, and regret. Full review...
Clover Moon by Jacqueline Wilson
Clover Moon lives in Cripps Alley, a slum street in Victorian England. Her father works at the factory and the heavy work has taken a toll on his health. He likes to drink an ale or two after work, spending money the family can barely afford. Clover's mother died giving birth to her younger sister, Megs, a wispy, shy child. Father married again - to Mildred, a sharp-tongued woman who is free with a beating, particularly if the beating goes to Clover. Clover has another four half-siblings and it's Clover, rather than Mildred, who takes care of them. Full review...
Saint Death by Marcus Sedgwick
Anapra is a slum just outside the Mexican city of Juarez, right on the border with the United States. People scrape a living working at one or more of the American factories, which pay wages so low that workers can barely feed themselves. This is where people come to try and find their own way into the US, or pay people traffickers to do it for them. It's also a place where the drug cartels run everything and things don't end well if you get on the wrong side of the drug cartels. Full review...
Lesser Spotted Animals by Martin Brown
There may be as many as 5,500 different species of mammal on our planet, but how many of those do we actually get to see and read about? 'Animal Books' are packed with cute pictures of tigers, elephants, monkeys and zebras, but what about their lesser-known neglected cousins? Don't they deserve a minute in the spotlight? Numbat, Solenodon, Zorilla, Onager and Linsang: Now is your time to shine! Full review...
Haunt Me by Liz Kessler
Some quite difficult themes of anxiety, bullying and self-harm in this beyond the grave love story, which at the same time creates a positive message about finding a path through them. Cute and enjoyable. Full review...
There May Be a Castle by Piers Torday
Heartbreaking, surprising, uplifting - Mouse's snowbound journey is one you'll remember for a long, long time. There May Be a Castle proves that stories matter. Full review...
Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven
High school can be far from the easiest place to navigate through for a lot of teenagers, but some have a harder job than others. After the sudden death of her mother, Libby started eating and she didn't stop until she almost killed herself. Years of doctors, counsellors and psychologists, combined with determination, sweat and tears, and she is finally ready to return to school after almost five years out. Libby is determined to make up for lost time, and refuses to be defined by her weight – she wants to be a girl who can do anything, a girl whose confidence and self-esteem is immune to anything that a few idiot high schoolers might throw her way. On the surface, Jack Masselin seems like the archetypal idiot high school guy: charming but thoughtless, superficial, and far too concerned with fitting in to do what he really knows is the right thing; but beneath all the charm and swagger, Jack is a nervous ticking time bomb. Every day is a struggle to get through, and he is constantly just one mistake away from embarrassing or hurting himself and the people around him. Because Jack has prosopagnosia, a cognitive disorder that means he can't recognise faces, whether it be his own, his family's or any of the hundreds of school kids that he is constantly surrounded by. Full review...
Minecraft Exploded Builds: Medieval Fortress by Mojang AB
If you have ever marvelled at the creative architecture designed by the talented members of the Minecraft community and been inspired to give it a go yourself, then Exploded Builds might be the perfect book for you. It is aimed at those of us who have the ambition but lack the necessary expertise to design such stunning buildings. Medieval Fortress will guide you every step of the way with detailed diagrams and customisation options, allowing you be king of you own castle in no time at all. Full review...
The Graveyard of the Hesperides by Lindsey Davis
Our heroine Albia's grey-eyed and broad-shouldered love interest in this, the fourth of the Falco New Generation crime novels (Falco himself has got on the wrong side of Emperor Domitian, and has very sensibly retired to the coast) is called Manlius – that alone should be enough to tell you reams about the wickedly sly sense of humour Ms Davis displays in her novels. The setting is once again Ancient Rome, and Ms Davis provides enough local colour to create a world so convincing you could almost be there. In fact, the descriptions are so vivid that, as you pull in your skirts or bewail the fate of your brand-new sandals to follow our gutsy heroine into picturesque slums like the Brown Toad bar or Mucky Mule Mews, you could be forgiven for suspecting you've wandered into somewhere far more familiar, like, say, the back streets of Brum. Full review...
Illuminature by Rachel Williams and Carnovsky
Like Halley's Comet, I am allowed out once every 70 years, or so, for the night. On one such trip to the trendier side of London I was supping an ale in another Hipster Bar, but this one had a difference. The walls were covered in overlapping paintings of animals in different colours. So what? The trick was revealing said animals. The lights in the pub changed colour every few minutes revealing a different set of creatures that reacted to that colour. It was cool after a few shandies, but now you can enjoy this process sober in a new book all about using coloured lenses to find hidden animals. Full review...
Danger Mouse: Declassified by Bruno Vincent
There is nothing else for it but to declare my love for Danger Mouse (and no, I don't mean the musician/producer, or the remake, which I've not sampled). What I didn't know at the time to call 'breaking the fourth wall', the chutzpah and energy of the storytelling, and primarily the simple and simply brilliant character design made it one of my go-to sources for entertainment, and about the only thing that would get the TV switched to ITV, apart from Blockbusters. The dates on the front of this volume prove we're referring to the genius original series, but these contents seem to me fully new. Taking it that they are, has the idea stood the test of time, and will people be on board for what is surely a much-belated tribute gift book? Full review...
Monster! (Dirty Bertie) by Alan MacDonald and David Roberts
Two things in fiction for the under-sevens seem to be very, very unlikely, at this stage. One is that Dirty Bertie does something sensible, like what his parents tell him, or succeeds for the right reasons at school, or perhaps tidies up. The other unlikely thing seems to be that the Dirty Bertie franchise runs out of ideas. Here are three more stories, for a lively spot on the transition between being read to and reading by yourself, and the quality is pretty much as good as before. Yes, it's evident that in these pages, Bertie and his friends are just as bad as before. Full review...
The Forbidden Tree: History or Folklore? by Jabulani Midzi
This is indeed a good question that not even Christians can agree on. The spectrum goes from the right wing Evangelical literalists who believe right down to the creation's 7 days being just that, all the way over to the left wing Anglo Catholic liberals, some of whom take issue with the virgin birth and the crucifixion. Staking my colours to the mast, I'm in the middle, believing that the Bible should be taken in historical context, that it does contain Old Testament myths and some accounts clearly written in a one-sided way but I firmly believe in Jesus, the miracles etc. Full review...
Home and Away by Dave Roberts
For most football fans, non-league clubs (that is, teams who play outside the top four divisions of English football) are like a distant relative fallen on hard times; you're vaguely aware of their existence but have no particular wish to visit them. Apart from a few weeks in early January, when the odd non-league club reaches the third round of the FA cup and embarks on a spot of giant killing, the lower leagues receive almost no attention outside their small groups of devoted supporters. So what's it like to support a non-league team? Enter Dave Roberts, a fan of Bromley FC who are currently plying their trade in the Vanarama National League – the fifth tier of English football. In Home and Away, Dave documents the highs and lows of travelling the country watching Bromley during the 2015/2016 season. Full review...
Gruffalo Crumble and Other Recipes by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler
It is hard to imagine, but the original Gruffalo book came out almost twenty years ago. This is a franchise that just keeps rolling on. Certainly, you can buy the book or the sequel, but if you visit a shop you will find Gruffalo toys, cards, even egg cups. Each year brings with it a new idea of how to push the Gruf and pals. 2016 is the year of the recipe book, but will it live up to the quality of the original? Full review...
Nutshell by Ian McEwan
Meet Trudy. Successfully living in a large and valuable London home, she is heavily pregnant, and in between two men – she has swapped the homeowner, poet and publisher John, for someone completely different, namely Claude, a nasty, brutish and short type. Some people cannot work out why on earth she has made that decision, including our narrator. Oh, and he himself, our narrator, is the child she's pregnant with. He is a very alert young thing, with nothing else to do but kick here and there, and practice what you might well call mindfulness, and listen in on Claude and Trudy, as they calmly talk their way to plotting and carrying out murder… Full review...
The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark by Jill Tomlinson and Paul Howard
If you think you know everything about owls, think again. Even the basic things that you THINK are a given may turn out to be wrong. Plop is an adorable 8 week old baby owl and he has the feathers and the beak and the all-around owl look, with two crucial differences: he's not very good at flying, and he's afraid of the dark. Which, for a nocturnal creature, is a bit of a problem. Full review...
The German War by Nicholas Stargardt
History can be a dry subject when it focusses only on events and the key people that shaped them. However, when it uses those events as the backdrop to the lives of ordinary people it truly comes to life. ‘The German War' is the story of the second world war through the eyes of a diverse group of Germans. It tells their stories, with great candour and humanity, as it follows the build up to the war, the war itself and its aftermath. Using detailed research, interviews and anecdotal evidence, Nicholas Stargardt has created a narrative that is both a historical record and compelling. Its scope is massive but it is a tremendous achievement. Books from the allies' perspective are many and varied; as a result, this can lead to a distortion of the historical record. This work addresses this imbalance. Full review...
The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore
The night-time of our ancestors is ending. Electric light is our future. The man who controls it will not simply make an unimaginable fortune. He will not simply dictate politics… The man who controls electricity will control the very sun in the sky.
Graham Moore's latest novel is set in 19th Century New York City following the War of the Currents immediately after the discovery of electricity. Paul Cravath is a young lawyer, recently graduated from Columbia Law School, who finds himself at the centre of the biggest lawsuit in American history to date: who invented the light bulb. Enlisted to defend George Westinghouse against 312 lawsuits and a sum of one billion dollars, Paul embarks on a seemingly impossible case to win. Going up against the incredibly intelligent and extremely resourceful Thomas Edison, who has newspapers at his disposal and the support of J.P. Morgan himself, Paul is nonetheless determined to win by any means necessary. In his unwavering quest for victory, Paul encounters Nikola Tesla, the eccentric genius, who could have the power to stop Edison, Alexander Bell, the inventor of the telephone and only one to beat Edison before, as well as Agnes Huntington, the astonishingly beautiful opera singer. With the stakes so high, Paul will discover that everyone is desperate to win, setting in motion their own plans with disastrous consequences. Full review...
The Thousandth Floor by Katharine McGee
The future's bright, and the future's TALL. In 2118, New York, life centres around The Tower. It's 1000 stories tall, takes up most of the island, and is now home to Grand Central station, Central Park, schools, shops, restaurants and gyms. A whole city under one very high roof. Where you live on within the tower is a proxy for who you are and how successful you, or at least your parents, have become. Higher floors trump lower floors, and the pinnacle is that 1000th floor penthouse, owned by Avery and her family. Full review...
The Wrong Train by Jeremy de Quidt
Imagine that it's dark. You look up, and suddenly you realise that you've taken the wrong train…so you get off at the next station. Only it isn't a station…and you're not alone. The wrong Train is a collection of spine-chilling stories which are told as part of a strange game to keep the boy entertained whilst he waits for the next train to appear…if there even is a next train. Full review...
The Norman Conquest: William the Conqueror's Subjugation of England by Teresa Cole
Long regarded as the most pivotal date in English history, not least to generations of us familiar with the 1930s Sellar and Yeatman spoof history '1066 And All That', the year of the Norman Conquest has long been seen as a relatively isolated event as well as the start of a new era for our island story. The full picture was inevitably more complex. Full review...
Sketches of Spain by Duncan Gough
I salute Duncan Gough for many things: for his spirit of adventure, his willingness to trail the backroads, his desire to document these and share them and encourage others to follow in his wheel-ruts. I love his willingness to engage with locals and fellow-travellers. Full review...
Set Free by Anthony Bidulka
Within minutes of arriving in the exotic, enigmatic, sweltering city of Marrakech, renowned author Jaspar Wills is kidnapped, blindfolded, bound and beaten. As Wills struggles to survive, he recounts his rise to fame, and the tragic events that led him to Morocco. With the kidnapper's demands left unmet, Wills faces death with fear, grief… and guilt. What happened in his past that led to this? Is someone he loves responsible, or is this payback for past sins? Living with a loss far greater than that of his own life, Jasper yearns to be set free. Six months later, struggling reporter Katie Edwards travels to Morocco to investigate the disappearance – and discovers a shocking truth. With stunning revelations galore, the truth will set you free. Can lies do the same? Full review...
Lamellia: The Kingdom of Mushrooms by Gloria D Gonsalves
Lamellia is a kingdom of mushrooms lying deep within a forest. It is ruled by Polipoli, its big brown king. One day, a group from his mushroom army finds a human baby abandoned in the forest. The baby is hungry and crying. What will the mushrooms do? Will they reject the baby as a member of a hostile species? Or will they take care of it and accept it as one of their own? They choose the latter option, but how will a kingdom of mushrooms take care of a human baby? By working together, of course! Full review...
