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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Heroic Measures by Jill Ciment
Ruth and Alex Cohen have to move from their beloved New York apartment. They love it, but it's five floors up and there's no elevator. Reluctantly they're having an open day for prospective purchasers - and hoping that they'll be able to buy something not too far out which has that elusive elevator. It's not just them, either. There's Dorothy. Dorothy ('Dottie' to those who know her well) is their Daschund. She's getting on in years, but then so are Ruth and Alex. Then - the day before the open house - two things happen. An unmarked petrol truck is blocking the city's main tunnel and there's no sign of the driver. You don't even need to have long memories to worry about terrorists in Manhattan. Then Dottie yelps in pain and she can't stand up. Full review...
The Truffle Mouse by Holly Webb
Alice is going through a tough time right now. Even though her mum and dad split up two years ago, she'd always hoped that they would eventually get back together. But when dad introduced his new girlfriend and her daughter and announced that they would be moving in, everything changed. School isn't any better, either. She's always getting told off in class and is jealous of her best friend Lucy, who seems to have the perfect family, but doesn't appreciate it. When mum sees how withdrawn Alice has become, she takes her to the pet shop to buy a hamster to take her mind off things. However, it's not a hamster that catches Alice's eye, but a sweet little mouse, with fur like cocoa powder. The trouble is, mum is terrified of mice! Full review...
Stuff Brits Like by Fraser McAlpine
With over 100 chapters on different aspects of Britain and Britishness, this book is both fascinating and hilarious. Just looking at the list of subjects is enough to produce a sardonic twist of that stiff upper lip: the chapters cover topics that range from offal to curry, from pedantry to banter, from conkers to rugby. There may be many chapters but this is no academic tome - each chapter is just two to three pages long, each is written with endearing affection, each is easy and satisfying - and quirkily funny - to read. Full review...
Where my Heart Used to Beat by Sebastian Faulks
In the early 1980’s, on a small island off the South of France, a Doctor named Robert Hendricks confronts his life – memories of wars, work, loves, and losses. As his history is explored and questioned by his host, Hendricks recalls days in Scottish universities, Italian trenches, mental asylums and windswept beaches. Links to the past are uncovered, and the raw wounds they expose take Hendricks on a search for sanity and raises the question – is life comprised of events themselves, or the way in which an individual chooses to remember them? Full review...
Submission by Michel Houellebecq and Lorin Stein (translator)
What do you expect from Submission? It is after all from one of Europe's more blunt huge-sellers, one who is most forthright in his opinions, narratives and characters' sexual lives. It has become indelibly linked with a new Europe, after its reception and contents led to publicity on the cover of Charlie Hebdo, which resulted in something less savoury than literature, to say the least. Do you expect it to be about a France of the near future, where a Muslim political party provides the president? Well, don't go into this submissively following your expectations. Full review...
Front Runner by Felix Francis
Jeff Hinkley is an undercover investigator for the British Horseracing Authority, so he was in a difficult position when he was approached by his friend Dave Swinton. Dave was champion jockey and he told Hinkley that he'd deliberately lost a race and there was no way that this could be kept as some confidential words between friends. The following day Hinkley returned to Swinton's house to discuss the matter further - and ended up trapped in the blisteringly-hot sauna. He was lucky to escape with his life. Swinton was not so lucky - his charred body was found in his burning car at a deserted beauty spot in Oxfordshire. Full review...
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd
Bunny was cosily tucked up in bed. It's a big room, painted green (very green) and with lots of things scattered around. Before Bunny goes to sleep he's going to look at them all and then say goodnight to each of them. There are the pictures on the walls (from nursery rhymes and fairy tales), a couple of kittens, a pair of mittens, a doll's house and a young mouse, a comb and a brush and a bowl of mush as well as a quiet old lady who was whispering hush. You get the idea? We're moving through the objects one by one in gentle rhyme before we start to say goodnight to them all. Full review...
The Revolving Door of Life by Alexander McCall Smith
I am always happy to sit back down with old friends, to catch up on what has been happening on Scotland Street. As in the last episode Bertie's Guide to Life and Mothers by Alexander McCall Smith there is plenty of Bertie throughout the whole story. Bertie is my favourite character by far, so this was very pleasing to me! Our other favourites are there too, however, so there's something to please everyone, from Bruce being, well, Bruce, and dear Angus reciting a poem at the end. Full review...
Of Orcas and Men: What Killer Whales Can Teach Us by David Neiwert
'Profoundly humbling experiences are good for our souls,' Neiwert asserts in the first pages of his all-encompassing book about killer whales. For him, encountering orcas, one of the world's largest mammals, has been both humbling and inspiring, reminding him that humans are just one among many wondrous species and that it is wrong for us to exploit other creatures for our own benefit. After moving to Seattle, he tried for three years to see the whales, and finally gave up; it was only when he began spending time in the places where the orcas live, simply for the pleasure of it, that he started seeing them all the time. Full review...
Zero World by Jason M Hough
Memory is an important element of making us who we are. Do we avoid certain courses of action knowing that the memory of it would haunt us for the rest of our lives? Most of us would not kill, but what if you could forget that you just ended someone's life? Then you may be a sociopath, but a useful sociopath that can be trained to be an assassin who kills, forgets and kills again. This type of person may even forget that they have visited new worlds. Full review...
Whispers Through A Megaphone by Rachel Elliott
Miriam doesn’t speak. Well, that’s not strictly true. She does speak, but nothing above a whisper which makes it hard to have a conversation with her. Particularly as she hasn’t left her house in three years. But today is the day. She’s going to open that door and walk outside. She really is. Ralph has finally twigged (and with no small amount of surprise) that his wife Sadie doesn’t actually love him. And now he’s not sure if she ever really did. Having spent so much time regurgitating his every moment onto Social Media, Ralph hasn’t really had a chance to think about it. But now he has, it is so shockingly awful that he has decided to run away. And of all the places he could run away to, he has chosen the same woods that Miriam has picked to be the first place she will visit out-of-doors. And Sadie? Well, she’s had enough of reading Tweets and living vicariously through the posts of others. Sadie is going to have an adventure of her own. Full review...
Deceptions by Kelley Armstrong
Liv is starting to understand the Fae world that has existed in secret, and her place within it. But the more she understands, the less she likes it. Visions of a girl torn between two men continue to plague her – visions that are starting to feel alarmingly similar to her real life relationships with Gabriel and Ricky. Full review...
The Mark by Rosemary Hayes
'She's his mark'. Rachel's on the run. Naïve, homeless and emotional, she's easy prey. But for whom? Full review...
The Duke Can Go to the Devil by Erin Knightley
As Regency ladies go, Mei-li Bradford is anything but conventional. For most of her life, she has travelled the world with her sea-captain father and seen exotic sights and locations that others could only dream of. Her upbringing amongst sailors has clearly rubbed off on her, however. Mei-li, or May to her friends, can drink and curse like a man and has no respect for propriety and convention. She may look like a well-bred lady, but certainly does not act like one. Therefore, disaster surely beckons when an uptight Duke shows an interest in her. His stuffy ways and conventional habits are anathema to May's free-spirited nature. Full review...
Capitalism and Human Values by Tony Wilkinson
Tony Wilkinson has a first class honours degree in philosophy and has worked in government service and investment management - the ideal background for a consideration of capitalism and the human values which propel it. It's not too long ago - certainly within my lifetime - that religion largely dictated the values held by individuals, but true religious belief now seems to be the exception rather than the rule. In its place we have a society for whom consumerism is the driving force - and a widening gap between those who can afford to consume and those who cannot. As Wilkinson says Getting and spending have come to define who we are. Full review...
The Last Pilot by Benjamin Johncock
You'd be forgiven for assuming that debut novelist Benjamin Johncock is American: The Last Pilot has the literary weight of a Great American Novel, with a limitless desert setting plus the prospect of soon dominating space, and the spare yet profound writing style of Ernest Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy. Johncock is British, but you can tell he's taken inspiration from stories about the dawn of the astronaut age, including Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff and films like Apollo 13. His protagonist, Jim Harrison, is a fictional Air Force test pilot who rubs shoulders with historical figures like Chuck Yeager and John Glenn in the quest to break the sound barrier and conquer space. Full review...
The Cow Who Climbed a Tree by Gemma Merino
Tina is a really curious cow who just wants to know everything there is to know about, well, everything. Her sisters think that's just silly, and when Tina tells them that she climbed a tree and found a dragon they decide the situation has gotten out of hand. But what will they find when they looking for her in the woods? You'll just have to read the book to find out. Full review...
The Bath Monster by Colin Boyd and Tony Ross
A great book for parents and kids alike, with an excellent premise and brilliantly carried out, I can see this being a popular choice for bedtime reading. Even if your children might not be too fond of the bath for a while afterwards... Full review...
Pugs of the Frozen North by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre
When Shen finds himself stranded in the middle of a frozen sea, with 66 shivering pugs for company and no food, he’s desperate to find help. Little does he suspect that this is just the start of their adventure in the frozen north: with his new friend Sika, and the pugs pulling their sled, he’s suddenly part of a race to the top of the world. Will they make it in time to meet the Snowfather or will one of the other contestants beat them to it? Full review...
Fortunes of France: City of Wisdom and Blood by Robert Merle and T Jefferson Kline (translator)
1566: Brothers Pierre and Samson de Siorac have been sent from their Perigore home to further their education at Montpellier. During their time there they learn more than their ascribed logic, philosophy and medicine. Indeed Pierre's focus is on his stomach and the affairs of the heart, as befitting a lusty 15 year old. Not all of the adventures are learned, culinary or romantic though; some lessons are a lot more dangerous. Full review...
Practical Landscape Painting: Materials, Techniques & Projects by David Hollis
Almost any of us can visit the countryside and capture the view in our memory or on our camera with comparatively consummate ease. However capturing it in paint is more difficult and yet something some of us (me included) dream of. It was therefore with great excitement that I picked up this compact book of seven lessons in landscape painting. As I believe (with good evidence) that I have the artistic ability of a house brick, it would be a challenge but I also have a dream to follow. Full review...
The Tiger Prowls: a pop-up book of wild animals by Seb Braun
It's a hardback book with a striking cover and when you open it, don't expect endpapers or gentle introductions: as you lift the cover, the tiger of the title appears:
The tiger prowls, stalking through the jungle.
Paw after heavy paw crunches on the forest floor.
Full review...
Grrrrr! by Rob Biddulph
Fred has won the contest for best bear in the wood for three years in a row. He's the best at everything from catching fish, doing the hula-hoop and scaring humans, to the all-important growling competition. But everything changes when another bear arrives and decides to enter the contest. Fred's no longer the best bear in town and, to make matters worse, he's lost his 'Grrrrr'. Fred's going to need help to find his 'Grrrr' in time for the start of the competition. But will the other animals want to help him look given he's been too busy training to make friends? Full review...
The First Thing You See by Gregoire Delacourt
Arthur Dreyfuss is a fairly run of the mill young man. He likes big breasts, cars, Juplier beer and big breasts. He’s also rather keen on big breasts. A good-looking boy, even if he does say so himself
…like Ryan Gosling, only better looking
we will take him at his word, although one would had thought a better looking Ryan Gosling would have had his fill of Zepplin chested females so as to dilute his desire for them. In any event, I suspect his longings stem from the fact that a young mechanic living a quiet and uneventful life in a tiny village in rural France is unlikely to have a multitude of such femmes crossing his path in search of their daily baguette. That said, when Arthur one day opens his front door to find a rather distressed but undeniably luscious Scarlett Johansson on his doorstep, he does not question his luck. He invites her in. As you do. Full review...
Twelve Kings: The Song of the Shattered Sands by Bradley Beaulieu
When she was a young child Ceda took a blood oath to seek vengeance against the twelve kings of Sharakhai and with good reason. Now, years later, the oath hasn't been fulfilled but Ceda has plenty of other things to keep her occupied. Whether couriering suspect packages, avoiding the asirim or risking her life in the combat pits to satisfy the blood thirsty crowd. Ceda has been biding her time and that time is approaching. However, she's only one 19 year old girl whereas the kings are legion and have powers to call on that aren't altogether natural. Blood must be avenged with blood; the only question is whose blood will it be? Full review...
What I Tell You in the Dark by John Samuel
A man called Will is fighting fiercely against corruption – desperate to expose his company's dodgy dealings to the press. Overcome with doubt and fear, he goes to kill himself. But, at the exact moment he attaches his noose to the back of the door, he is saved. By a curious housemate or a concerned girlfriend? No, by an Angel. Not the white-feathered guardian Angel you may expect, but one who wishes to help Will achieve his ends, and so possess the body of the hapless Will in order to finish what he started. It goes without saying that the Angel is hoping things go better than they did with the last guy he possessed – a hapless young man from Galilee called Jesus… Full review...
Brothers at Arms by Jemima Brigges
Certain decisions are pivotal points in time; key moments that define everything that follows and create waves that ripple with repercussions for years to come. Kindly squire Tom Norberry could never have foreseen the impact that taking in two orphaned relatives would have on his future happiness. This single, altruistic act of kindness would set in motion a chain of events that would eventually cause a deep household rift and threaten to sully the good family name that he had worked to hard to uphold. Full review...
