Difference between revisions of "Book Reviews From The Bookbag"

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'''Read [[:Category:New Reviews|new reviews by category]]. '''<br>
 
'''Read [[:Category:New Reviews|new reviews by category]]. '''<br>
 
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''<!-- Remove -->
 
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''<!-- Remove -->
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|author= Stewart O'Nan
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|title= Last Night at the Lobster
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|rating= 4
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|genre= General Fiction
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|summary=The Red Lobster seafood restaurant chain is closing some of its poorly-performing branches just before Christmas. Amid the Christmas lights, office parties and forced jollity Manny DeLeon, the manager of one of these failing outlets, has to keep it all together for one last day. Short-handed, with most of the staff who've bothered to turn up facing unemployment, he tries to make the best of a bad job, all the while knowing this will be the last day he'll spend with the waitress he shouldn't still be in love with, particularly not now he's about to be a dad. Oh, and there's a blizzard on the way.
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1760293865</amazonuk>
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|author=Tom Malmquist and Henning Koch (translator)
 
|author=Tom Malmquist and Henning Koch (translator)
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|summary=Learning your ABCs is also seemingly learning the same items appearing over and over again.  A is not only A – it is also Apple.  B is Ball, C is Car.  It is almost as if there are only 26 objects in the world and they happen to start with different letters of the alphabet.  In fact, apart from Xylophone and X-Ray, there are loads of things that you could choose to put in an ABC book, if only you had a vast repository of objects and art that you could choose from …
 
|summary=Learning your ABCs is also seemingly learning the same items appearing over and over again.  A is not only A – it is also Apple.  B is Ball, C is Car.  It is almost as if there are only 26 objects in the world and they happen to start with different letters of the alphabet.  In fact, apart from Xylophone and X-Ray, there are loads of things that you could choose to put in an ABC book, if only you had a vast repository of objects and art that you could choose from …
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857638165</amazonuk>
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857638165</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
 
|author=Liz Pichon
 
|title=Family, Friends and Furry Creatures (Tom Gates)
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Tom Gates has got a problem: his shoes are making a noise.  They sort of rasp when he walks, only he can't recreate the sound at home.  At school it's a different matter: not only is the noise very loud, there are those of his classmates who suggest that it has originated from somewhere a little more, well, ''intimate''.  All in all it's not a good start to the day for Tom, particularly when he realises that he's also forgotten his baby photo for the latest school project.  Class 5F are building their family trees and they've got to interview family members to get stories of their lives for the project.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407168118</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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Revision as of 13:14, 18 May 2017

The Bookbag

Hello from The Bookbag, a 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.

There are currently 16,084 reviews at TheBookbag.

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Reviews of the Best New Books

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Read the latest features.

Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan

4star.jpg General Fiction

The Red Lobster seafood restaurant chain is closing some of its poorly-performing branches just before Christmas. Amid the Christmas lights, office parties and forced jollity Manny DeLeon, the manager of one of these failing outlets, has to keep it all together for one last day. Short-handed, with most of the staff who've bothered to turn up facing unemployment, he tries to make the best of a bad job, all the while knowing this will be the last day he'll spend with the waitress he shouldn't still be in love with, particularly not now he's about to be a dad. Oh, and there's a blizzard on the way. Full review...

In Every Moment We Are Still Alive by Tom Malmquist and Henning Koch (translator)

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Tom Malmquist is a poet from Sweden. Originally published in Swedish in 2015, this is his first work of prose. While it's being marketed as a novel, it reads more like a stylized memoir. Similar to Karl Ove Knausgaard's books, it features the author as the central character and narrator, and the story of grief it tells is a highly personal one. Full review...

Your Father's Room by Michel Deon

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

I don't feel altogether qualified to review Michel Déon's 2004 fictionalised memoir Your Father's Room, translated here into English for the first time. I hadn't heard of Déon before receiving my copy, let alone read any of his books, published over a 70 year period to much acclaim in his homeland. But it's part of the pleasure of book reviewing to read with no prior knowledge or prejudice, all the more so if you discover an absolute gem. Full review...

A Talent for Murder by Andrew Wilson

4.5star.jpg Crime (Historical)

Agatha Christie wrote some tantalising crime thrillers back in her day, and here Andrew Wilson makes her a victim to a plot not unlike one of her own. It's all about the mystery, and it really drives the story forward. Agatha is ambushed by a strange man at the train station; she is given a proposition that confuses her and secretly intrigues her. Indeed, for this man wants her to commit a murder. Full review...

Contagion: Book 1 (Dark Matter) by Teri Terry

4.5star.jpg Teens

It's not a spoiler if I tell you that Callie dies because she does die and she dies in the first few pages of Contagion. Callie - Calista - disappeared more than a year ago. Her brother Kai is still looking for her, hopeful that she will be found alive and well. But Callie isn't alive and well. She's been taken to a secretive medical facility on the island of Shetland, experimented on, and then burned to death. But Callie survived the burning in non-corporeal form. How? Full review...

Siracusa by Delia Ephron

4star.jpg General Fiction

Michael and Lizzie are a writer–journalist couple from New York City; Finn and Taylor live with their ten-year-old daughter, Snow, in Portland, Maine, where Finn (an old flame of Lizzie's) owns a restaurant. After meeting up by chance on a trip to London last year, they decide to go away together for a proper holiday in Italy, to the Sicilian island of Siracusa via Rome. In alternating chapters, the narrative moves fluidly between the perspectives of the four adults, all of whom are reflecting – with the help of hindsight and therapy – on what ended up being a disastrous trip. Although we don't learn until very late on in the book exactly what went wrong, there's a sense that it might be something to do with Snow. Full review...

Politics: Between the Extremes by Nick Clegg

4.5star.jpg Politics and Society

The political landscape is changing rapidly at the moment. A little more than two years ago we were facing the end of the UK's first coalition government since World War II and fully expecting that we would see another. Instead we saw a Conservative government elected with a workable majority. Brexit saw the end of one Prime Minister and another elected by a few members of parliament. As I write we're facing another general election, with a Conservative landslide predicted. In two years we've seen the Liberal Democrats collapse from being part of the ruling coalition to a party whose MPs could hold a meeting in a decent-sized car. Full review...

The Beautiful Game by Alan Gibbons

4star.jpg Dyslexia Friendly

Football is all about its colours. And even if I write in the season when one team in blue knocks another team in blue from the throne of English football, it's common knowledge that red is the more successful colour to wear. But is that flame red? Blood red? The red of the Sun cover banner when it falsely declared 96 Liverpool FC fans were fatally caught up in a tragedy – and that it had been one of their own making? And while we're on about colour, where were the people of colour in football in the olden days? There are so many darker sides to football's history it's enough to make a young lad question the whole game… Full review...

Lena Lenik S.O.S. by Bernard Ashley

4star.jpg Dyslexia Friendly

Lena's mother seems very ill. Scary noises are coming from the bathroom, she's off food and completely listless, complaining of the effort involved in sewing a patch onto a cub scout uniform. It might be a surprise to the young reader of this book when we learn what the reason is – certainly it was obvious from page two for me – but there are definitely more surprises to come. Mother makes a slightly unusual decision about her condition – leaving Lena with a lot on her plate when fate sets in with a surprise of its own… Full review...

The Power by Naomi Alderman

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

It started with the girls and spread. From younger woman to older woman, it was awoken and everything changed. Womankind now has the power of electricity in their fingertips and, slowly at first, the balance of power in the world starts shifting. We follow the stories of different people, in different walks of life, who see this from the very beginning and hurtle towards 'the event'. One thing in this startling new development is certain, patriarchal archetypes and chauvinist thinkers are in for the shock of their lives. Literally. Full review...

The Summer House Party by Caro Fraser

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

In the gloriously hot summer of 1936, a group of people meet at a country house party. Within three years, England will be at war, but for now, time stands still. Dan Ranscombe is clever and good-looking, but he resents the wealth and easy savoir-faire of fellow guest, Paul Latimer. Surely a shrewd girl like Meg Slater would see through that, wouldn't she? And what about Diana, Paul's beautiful sister, Charles Asher, the Jewish outsider, Madeleine, restless and dissatisfied with her role as children's nanny? And artist Henry Haddon, their host, no longer young, but secure in his power as a practised seducer. As these guests gather, none has any inkling the choices they make will have fateful consequences, lasting through the war and beyond. Or that the first unforeseen event will be a shocking death… Full review...

The Big Bird Spot by Matt Sewell

4star.jpg Children's Non-Fiction

Recently I stood on a viewing platform at the RSPB reserve at Bempton Cliffs as a very helpful volunteer guided my sight line to one of the puffins who'd arrived on the cliffs in the last few days. Finally, I found one, after visually sorting through all the other birds on the precipitous cliff face. It was great fun and very rewarding. The third double-page spread in wild-life author and artist Matt Sewell's first book for children, The Big Bird Spot, shows some cliffs very like those at Bempton, but this time you're going to be looking for twenty three Little Auks, in amongst the guillemots, puffins, herring gulls and razorbills. Oh, and you're looking for a pair of binoculars too: our bird watcher is very careless, because you're going to have to find them in every picture. Full review...

Today We Die a Little: Emil Zatopek, Olympic Legend to Cold War Hero by Richard Askwith

4star.jpg Sport

As a runner myself, I often look for sources of inspiration. Training is rewarding, but every so often a day comes along when I question whether it is all worth it or not. Zatopek proves that is, indeed, all worth it. He put copious amounts of effort into his training, and the number of races he won over his career as a professional athlete clearly shows the results of it. Full review...

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

5star.jpg True Crime

Killers of the Flower Moon tells the story of the Osage tribe, forced to settle in the rocky, uninhabitable wilds of Oklahoma in what would become Osage County. In an unexpected turn of fortune, prospectors struck oil, instantly catapulting the Osage into unimaginable wealth and fortune making them some of the richest people in the world. Then members of the tribe start to die, slowly at first of apparently natural causes then in increasingly violent ways. Investigation into the matter stalls and is beset by incompetence and a general lack of interest in the fate of the Osage until the FBI becomes involved and draws together a team of battle scarred, unorthodox agents led by former Texas Ranger Tom White. As pressure on White increases, from both the FBI and the increasingly angry Osage, the race to find the truth becomes increasingly difficult, with more twists and double crosses than any murder mystery. Full review...

Passing for White by Tanya Landman

5star.jpg Dyslexia Friendly

In 1847, in Macon, Georgia, Benjamin was a slave. He was a talented carpenter too, but on November the 19th he was unnerved: a white woman was looking at him, smiling and being polite. What was going on? He wasn't just unnerved, but nervous: you see, Benjamin was looking at the white woman, looking her in the eye and a slave could get himself killed for less than that. Only this wasn't a white woman: this was Rosa, who was mixed race. She could pass for white, but she too was a slave. Rosa and Benjamin eventually married, but it didn't stop Rosa's master from taking sexual advantage of her and when she found that she was pregnant she had no way of knowing who the father was. Full review...

Block 46 by Johana Gustawsson and Maxim Jakubowski (Translator)

4.5star.jpg Thrillers

Jewellery designer Linnéa Blix fails to appear at a Cartier event presenting some of her new creations. Her friend Alexis Castells knows something must be wrong; nothing would have kept the talented young artist from attending this prestigious function. When a young woman's mutilated body is discovered in a Swedish marina near Linnéa's holiday home, Alexis' worst fears are confirmed. But Linnéa's death is not unique; in fact, she is only the latest in a string of similar gruesome murders that have occurred in both London and Falkenberg. Up until now, the bodies have all belonged to young boys, so what has caused the killer to change his or her MO? How can Alexis help to find justice for her friend, and stop a serial killer before he strikes again? Full review...

The Harder They Fall by Bali Rai

4.5star.jpg Dyslexia Friendly

Cal loves comic books. He also dreams of being a superhero and saving the day while simultaneously winning the heart of the girl (Freya being the girl, hopefully). Batman is his favourite superhero. But Cal's world outside his daydreams is not particularly superhero-like. Because Cal is a bit of a geek and he is being bullied by mean girl Anu, who makes him complete homework assignments which she then sells on to lazy classmates. Still, it's not all bad. Cal's parents are lovely and the gorgeous Freya is making friendly overtures... Full review...

The Serpent Sword by Matthew Harffy

4.5star.jpg Historical Fiction

It's AD 633 and Albion is a divided island made up of petty warlords who want to be treated like honourable royalty but act like gangsters. Romans are a memory that have entered into myth and the souls of Albion are torn between the old Gods and the new Christ. It is in this world that we follow the adventures of Beobrand as he undertakes the classic hero’s journey. Beobrand moves from wide-eyed teenager to hardened and honourable warrior through a brutal rite of passage as he hunts the killer of his brother and seeks to become a true warrior. Full review...

The Futures by Anna Pitoniak

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

When we first meet Evan Peck, he has just started at Yale College, where he plays ice hockey. Like lots of the other players, he is actually Canadian, from small-town British Columbia. One night after a party Evan meets Julia Edwards at their dorm and they go out for pizza. She technically has a boyfriend from her Boston boarding school days, but they soon break up and before long Julia and Evan have become inseparable, as they will remain for the rest of their college years. Full review...

No Middle Name by Lee Child

4star.jpg Crime

There is a theory, to which those who regularly read my reviews will know I sometimes subscribe, which says that the short story's heyday has passed and it has now put itself out to grass. This is particularly true, some say, and I have been known to concur, of the crime and thriller genres. Tosh! I can only apologise to all authors involved and own up: I simply haven't been paying attention. Not even to shorter offerings my by favourite authors. So: big thanks to Lee Child and publishers Bantam Press for putting me straight with No Middle Name : a collection of short stories about my favourite latter-day, American-style, Robin Hood by the name of Jack Reacher. Full review...

Fall Out by Lizzy Mumfrey

5star.jpg General Fiction

Charlton's the sort of village where people aspire to live, despite its apparent ordinariness. There's the usual mix of commuters (it's not too far from London) and those who make their lives in the village. Richard Hughes is a commuter, but his wife Jessica works at the local academy, where both their children - Alfie and Hannah - are pupils. Pete Cole is a newly-promoted police superintendent and clearly still fond of his voluptuous wife, Susie. Actually, some of that voluptuousness might be better described as fat - Pete suspects that he might need longer arms to hug her before long. Less popular is Gary Webber. He's the sort of man who causes people to heave a sigh of relief when he joins someone else for a drink at the golf club. Full review...

The Silence Between Breaths by Cath Staincliffe

5star.jpg Crime

I'm always wary of author endorsements, even those from people I rate as writers, but the harrowing and humane quote from Ian Rankin on the front cover of The Silence Between Breaths does not overstate the case. This is an extremely powerful book. Full review...

Arbella Stuart: The Uncrowned Queen by Jill Armitage

4.5star.jpg Biography

Lady Arbella Stuart, cousin to both Elizabeth I of England and James VI of Scotland, was one of the unfortunate figures of English history who might have been Queen – and who, like the even more tragic Lady Jane Grey, might have paid the ultimate price. This is a sad but engrossing story of one whose only crime was to have royal blood coursing through her veins. Full review...

The Black Hand by Stephan Talty

4star.jpg True Crime

History is a fascinating subject to study as there is so much of it, so why do we keep going back to the same places? I feel like I have walked the steps of Julius Caesar and married at least two of Henry VIII's wives, so often I have read about them. There are countless other tales out there to learn about that may be more obscure, but are just as exciting. I don't know much about New York around 1900, but after reading The Black Hand by Stephan Talty I now know it was a violent place to live, but an interesting one to learn about. Full review...

A Burning in the Darkness by A P McGrath

4star.jpg Crime

At a busy airport, Michael Kieh is a full time faith representative serving the needs of some of the 80 million passengers, but circumstance and evidence point to his guilt in a terrible crime. His struggle to prove his innocence leads him on a charged journey that pitches love against revenge. When a mysterious woman confides a dark secret, he is motivated to redress a heart-breaking injustice. Together they must battle against powerful forces as they edge dangerously close to unmasking a past crime. But Michael faces defeat when he chooses to protect a young witness, sparking memories of Michael's past in Liberia. As he fights to prove his innocence, Michael has to risk anything for the sake of love and truth. Full review...

British Museum: ABC by Nosy Crow

4star.jpg For Sharing

Learning your ABCs is also seemingly learning the same items appearing over and over again. A is not only A – it is also Apple. B is Ball, C is Car. It is almost as if there are only 26 objects in the world and they happen to start with different letters of the alphabet. In fact, apart from Xylophone and X-Ray, there are loads of things that you could choose to put in an ABC book, if only you had a vast repository of objects and art that you could choose from … Full review...