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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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...
Edward IV: Glorious Son of York by Jeffrey James
Medieval England's own game of thrones, The Wars of the Roses, was at the centre of a turbulent age. In retrospect much of the history of medieval England, between the Norman conquest and the advent of the Tudors, seems to have been a chronicle of instability often verging on and sometimes erupting into rebellion or civil war. The fifteenth-century conflicts between the houses of Lancaster and York, lasting intermittently for thirty years, were more protracted and even more brutal than the rest, with several fierce battles and sudden changes of fortune for the two rival families, both descended from King Edward III. The rise, fall and rise again of King Edward IV was a constant theme of the wars. Full review...
West by Julia Franck and Anthea Bell (translator)
Put yourself in the shoes of a young mother to two children, who declares her intention to leave the Communist East Germany for West Berlin, and thus loses her scientist job. What would you expect on the other side – shops full of attainable products, pleasant neighbourhoods, nice neighbours, an active and busy new life, where things might feel alien but at least you speak the same language? Well, for Nelly Senff, this is hardly the case. Once past the depressing Eastern exit procedures she is confronted with more desultory interrogations from those 'welcoming' her to the West, beyond which she and her children (their father, whom she never married, is long assumed dead by the authorities, if nobody else) are practically left in a shared accommodation in a transit camp. The shops are full of what is still unobtainable, the children hate their new school – and people still look down on them as being foreign, even if they have only moved across a city. Full review...
New Words for Old: Recycling Our Language for the Modern World by Caroline Taggart
I never declare myself off to have a 'kip', as I recall reading that it originally meant the same amount of sleeping – and activity – as happens in a whorehouse. The word 'cleave' can mean either to split apart, or to connect together, and I'm sure there's another word that has completely changed its meaning from one end of things to another although I can't remember which. Certainly, literally has tried its best to make a full switch through rampant misuse. Such is the nature of our language – fluid both in spelling until moderately recently, and definitely in meaning. This attempt at capturing a corner of the trivia/words/novelty market is interested in such tales from the etymological world – the way we have adapted old words for our own, modern and perhaps very different usages. Certainly, having browsed it over a week, I can declare it a pretty strong attempt. Full review...
Realm Divided: A Year in the Life of Plantagenet England by Dan Jones
1215 has gone down in history as the year of Magna Carta, the result of King John's increasingly discontented barons attempts to exert control over their wayward and stubborn monarch. John had succeeded to the throne of England in 1199, at the end of an often turbulent century. His father, Henry II, had succeeded in restoring the authority of the crown after almost twenty years of civil war between the supporters of two rival claimants to the kingdom. He had inherited a challenging set on both sides of the Channel, and within four years had been driven out of most of the French ones, notably the duchy of Normandy. Posterity would bestow on him the unflattering nicknames 'John Softsword' and later 'John Lackland'. Full review...
Is it Christmas Yet? by Jane Chapman
Ted is excited. Well, let's be honest - he's out of control, dashing around the house and yelling Faster, Rudolph, Faster. Poor Rudolph is in Ted's truck for the moment, but he's looking as worried as all the other toys. Christmas is coming, but the trouble is that it's not coming fast enough. And then the questions start. Poor Big Bear is bombarded with Is it Christmas yet? every few minutes. Big Bear's more patient than I could be and keeps saying soon in a soothing voice which eventually turns to a growl. Explaining what needs to be done before Christmas arrives doesn't help, as Ted offers to help. And we all know how much help that sort of help is... Full review...
Shopaholic to the Rescue by Sophie Kinsella
After a year of waiting (and somewhat frantic googling for the release date), Becky returns with the latest in the Shopaholic series, and guess what? It was completely worth the wait. Full review...
Mystery Mile by Margery Allingham
On a transatlantic liner, an American points out Crowdy Lobbett and predicts that he will have been murdered within a fortnight. Indeed he places a bet on it. It seems like a safe bet: retired Judge Lobbett has been the subject of four near misses so far: four attempts on his life that have misfired and killed someone close to him. His children have persuaded him to take a trip to England in an attempt to keep him somewhat safer, for a while at least. Full review...
