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<h1 id="mf-title">The Bookbag</h1>
Hello from The Bookbag, a site featuring books from all the many walks of literary life - [[:Category:Fiction|fiction]], [[:Category:Biography|biography]], [[:Category:Crime|crime]], [[:Category:Cookery|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, the charity shop 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 [[:Category:Interviews|author interviews]], and all sorts of [[:Category:Lists|top tens]] - all of which you can find on our [[features]] page. If you're stuck for something to read, check out the [[Book Recommendations|recommendations]] page.
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There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY:Reviews}}''' reviews at TheBookbag.
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].''' <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->
{{Frontpage
|author=Seishi Yokomizo and Louise Heal Kawai (translator)|title=The Honjin Murders|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=To many readers, the phrase 'locked room murder mystery' is enough to make the book one to read; preferably quantified by the words 'clever' or 'good'. For those who need more, here is the extra background – we're in rural Japan in the 1930s. The oldest son of an esteemed family is belatedly getting married, although the whole affair is really not as ostentatious as it might be – hardly anybody has turned up, what with it being arranged at great haste. She only has an uncle representing her family, for one thing. Either way, the celebrations have gone ahead as planned, only for the wedded couple to be slashed to death in their private annex before the sun rises on their marriage. What with a man missing parts of his fingers being in the neighbourhood, and some mysterious use of a traditional musical instrument at the time of the crime, this case has a lot of the peculiar about it.|isbn=06928535451782275002}}{{Frontpage|author=Cixin Liu|title=The Things We DoDeath's End|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary= If I'd been paying more attention when I picked this book up, I would have put it back on the shelf. Not because I didn't want to read it, but because I'd have figured out that it was the final part of a trilogy. Coming in part way through a saga is never the easiest thing to do and it's particularly true in science fiction because without knowing the back-story there are not just people whose names mean nothing to you (when it's assumed they will) but there are whole concepts that you won't understand. This latter is particularly true of Cixin Liu's work – his range is phenomenal. George R R Martin, who knows a thing or two about world-creation, described it as ''a unique blend of scientific and philosophical speculation, conspiracy theory and cosmology''. All of that and more.|isbn=1784971650}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1780894511|title=Die Alone|author=Kay PfaltzSimon Kernick
|rating=4
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=ItRay Mason is in prison awaiting trial for murder and he's 2015 in the vulnerable prisoner unit: as a cop he's something of a target, but the unit is not as secure as the inmates would have hoped and Dr Eleanor Hartley Mason is injured in a prison psychologist at the state penitentiary riot. On his way to hospital he's broken free by armed men and she knows that her next patient an offer is not going made to be easyhim. He'Jane Does to assassinate the man who is likely to become the country' has been convicted of the murder of two men - one a police officer. She pleaded guilty s next prime minister and since he'll then has been silent: even her be given a new identity is in doubtso that he can start afresh abroad. She was carrying identification as Jane Dunlap when she was arrestedHis captors say that they're MI6, but Mason has his doubts. His choices are limited though and he has personal reasons to believe that it's been proved to would be falsebetter if Alastair Sheridan was dead.}}{{Frontpage|author=Akwaeke Emezi|title=Pet|rating=4.5|genre=Teens|summary=The people of the town Lucille believe that all the monsters are gone. There seem Their children are raised to be no family or friends understand that they were saved by the angels, those who rid the town of evil, and there are missing herno monsters anymore. EleanorBut one day, Jam accidentally cuts herself, and bleeds a little onto one of her mother's task paintings. The blood awakens a bizarre, terrifying-looking creature named Pet, who somehow comes to life and declares that it is here to get Jane talkinghunt the monster. Though Jam tries to convince it that all the monsters are gone, to find out why a seemingly normal young woman would murder two menPet is certain that there is one, still, and that the monster is hiding in the home of her best friend, Redemption.|isbn=0571355110
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Patti Smith1686751680|title=Year of the MonkeyMy Mummy does weird things / Maman fait des choses bizarres|author=Amelie Julien and Gustyawan
|rating=4
|genre=BiographyFor Sharing|summary=On Which child doesn't think that there mother is, well, ''weird''? It might be that in the coast of Santa Cruzmorning their mother doesn't like speaking much, Patti Smith enters the lunar year of the monkey when every self- one packed respecting child knows that that is when you're at your brightest with mischief, sorrow, and unexpected moments. In a strangerlots to say? ''s words, Why''Anything is possible: after all, itthen does Mummy stick her fingers in her ears? Then there's the year doing yoga in front of the monkeytelevision, which could be worrying if it wasn't so funny. We won'. As Smith wanders t go into too much detail about what goes on in the bathroom and the coast of Santa Cruz in solitudecolour changes which have occured when Mummy emerges and frankly, she reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in the less said the better about her life - loss and aging are faced head reactions to your artistic efforts on, as it the shifting political waters in Americawall. |isbn=1526614758 I mean, what else would you use paint for?
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Justine Avery and Liuba Syrotiuk
|title=What Wonders Do You See... When You Dream?
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=''The day has ended''<br>
''Hasn't it been splendid?'' <br>
''But now, it's time, to be sure'' <br>
''For an entirely different adventure'' <br>
I hope you haven't forgotten how it feels to be much too excited for bed. If you're a parent at least, you'll know how it is to persuade an excited small person that yes, it is in fact time for bed. ''What Wonders DoYou See...'' sets out to cater to these children. Instead of trying to persuade them that night time is calm time, it takes a slightly different tack. It tells them that sleep is actually an exciting time: a time of dreams in which imagination takes over and has no limit. But the trick in accessing this wonderful and exciting world, is to get calm and relaxed first so that you can easily fall asleep and open the door to it.
|isbn=194812422X
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Margaret AtwoodMichael Harris|title=Solitude: In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded World|rating=5|genre=Lifestyle|summary= This is not the book I was expecting it to be. For some reason I expected it to be another self-help manual on how to find calm, how to step outside the mainstream, but it is not that at all. Instead of telling us how, it is more about the ''why''. Harries examines how we're eroding solitude, which used to be a natural part of our human life, and why that matters. Of course he talks about how some people have found solitude and what has come of that, and eventually in the final chapter he talks about his own experience of having deliberately sought it out, but mostly he wanders down the alleys and by-ways that his thinking about this lost art led him.|isbn=1847947662}}{{Frontpage|author=Andy Briggs|title=Ctrl+S|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary= Life in the near future's not all bad. We've reversed global warming and fixed the collapsing bee population. We even created SPACE, a virtual-sensory universe where average guys like Theo Wilson can do almost anything they desire. But almost anything isn't enough for some. Every day, normal people are being taken, their emotions harvested - and lives traded - to create death-defying thrills for the rich and twisted. Now Theo’s mother has disappeared. And as he follows her breadcrumb trail of clues, he'll come up against the most dangerous SPACE has to offer: vPolice, AI Bots and anarchists - as well as a criminal empire that will kill to stop him finding her . . .|isbn=1409184641}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1609809378|title=The TestamentsRabbits' Rebellion|author=Ariel Dorfman and Chris Riddell
|rating=4.5
|genre=Dystopian FictionConfident Readers|summary= Finally! Almost forty years onWe're in the realm of the rabbits, we only the foxes and wolves have a sequel to taken over. [[The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood|The Handmaid's Tale]]. I King Wolf, His Wolfiness, has declared the rabbits don't want to tell you too much about exist, but the plot because it's a novel pesky birds have spread rumours from awing that is entirely plot driventhe bunnies are in fact still around. Suffice it Demanding a propaganda spree, King Wolf orders a humble monkey to say that ''The Testaments'' takes place fifteen years laterbe his official portrait photographer, fifteen years after Offred gets into but whatever the poor innocent monkey prints out in his darkroom there is a van, not knowing what will happen nextdistinct leporine hint. It's told by three narrators: Aunt Lydia Can King Wolf succeed in proving himself victorious, can the rabbits show their continued existence to all who need to know of it – and what can the poor monkey caught in between do?}}{{Frontpage|author=Innosanto Nagara|title=M is secretly writing her memoirs for Movement|rating=4|genre=Emerging Readers|summary=Set in Ardua Hall; AgnesIndonesia, in the not too distant past, this is a girl brought up in Gilead story about social change. Dealing with some difficult issues, such as political corruption and nepotism, the expectation she book is neither boring nor preachy. It educates gently, with vibrant, challenging illustrations, and it portrays how social movements need people who will try, even when it seems that they will marry fail. The message is a commanderpositive one; Daisythat in an increasingly uncertain world, a rebellious teenage girl in Canada who knows of Gilead only from school lessons and its Pearl Girl missionaries who occasionally call into we do still have the store owned by her parents..power to instigate change.|isbn=17847423251609809351
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Anne Boden1780724047|title=The Money RevolutionA Dictionary of Interesting and Important Dogs|author=Peter J Conradi
|rating=4
|genre= Business and FinancePets|summary= Money is changing. It might not be in the ways you think. We’re not suddenly getting I struggle to resist a book about dogs, but I did wonder why this one was so ''thin'': given that I've never encountered a 3p dog who wasn't interesting or £3 coin (important - and probably both, I was expecting a massive tome. But ''A Dictionary of Interesting and have you ever even found Important Dogs'' is actually ''a country that offers anything different to rich compendium of the 1world's most significant and beloved dogs'' and it's certainly a rich treasure trove. We begin with Peter J Conradi's four collies: Cloudy, 2Sky. Bradley and Max. They're consecutive rather than simultaneous dogs, but what comes over is Conradi's love for each and every one of them. I knew that I was in safe hands.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1785769294|title=Man at the Window (Detective Cardilini)|author=Robert Jeffreys|rating=4.5 model?) We’re getting |genre=Crime|summary=It's when we read that a lot more digital with payments, which seems young boy is creeping reluctantly to suit a teacher's bedroom one October night that we realise something is badly wrong. Nowadays you ''might'' hope that something would be done about it fairly quickly but this was 1965 and child abuse was generally regarded as malicious mischief on the part of the child. The boy would be safe that night though - albeit in the most people apart from charity collectors and horrific fashion. When he reached Captain Edmund's bedroom he found the homeless man dead on the streetfloor, but although this book has the subtitle top of his skull missing. The school's initial reaction was that includes the word ‘’digital’’, it’s not really about this either. Instead it’s about the ‘’management’’ was a dreadful accident: there had been a cull of your finances, kangaroos in some nearby fields and how to take controlit was obviously a stray bullet which had killed the Captain.|isbn=1789660610
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=147117316X1786695227|title=Guilty Not GuiltyInvisible in a Bright Light|author=Felix FrancisSally Gardner
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The beginning of this excellent story will leave the reader more than a little confused: who is the man in the green suit, what is the Reckoning, and why are rows of people in a cave? But stick with it – Ms Gardner is very cleverly letting us experience the same disorientation as our heroine. We watch in dismay as the strange man, who seems to have no eyes, does his best to persuade her to answer his questions. But for some reason Celeste, despite her bewilderment, remains wary and gives nothing away.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1912374854
|title=Violet
|author=S J I Holliday
|rating=3.5
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=I've never been but understand that travelling is all about meeting new people and forming instantaneous bonds with people in often chance situations. Well that's exactly what happens when the two main/only characters meet in a travel agency in Beijing - Carrie is unsuccessfully trying to get a refund on an extra ticket for the Trans-Siberian train and Violet is trying to unsuccessfully buy a ticket for the same sold-out journey. As the two team up, travelling through Mongolia, Serbia and into Russia, it could've been the start of a beautiful friendship but this a thriller after all so it quickly becomes a tale of obsession, manipulation and toxic friendships.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1912374838|title=Nothing Important Happened Today|author=Will Carver|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Nothing Important Happened Today is a dark, twisted, difficult read. Stories about cults often are, but this is different; it's written with a sense of style that is quite unlike anything I've read before. I can't remember ever having read a novel with such an odd, distinctive narrative voice. While a slim and relatively small book, the slow-moving nature of the plot makes it feel far larger than its 276 pages.}}{{Frontpage|isbn= williamabbey|title=The Honourable Pursuit of William Abbey|author=Claire North|rating=3.5|genre=Paranormal|summary=When William Herbert Millgate Gordon-Russell (Bill Russell Abbey fails to prevent the lynching of a young boy in 1880's South Africa, he finds himself cursed by the grieving mother. A naïve English Doctor, he slowly learns the weight of the curse upon him, as the shadow of the dead boy begins to follow him across the world. Never stopping, always growing – it crosses oceans and mountains in pursuit of William. As he finds himself unable to resist speaking the truths that he hears in others, he also learns that the dark shadow is deadly – and seeks to those kill the one he loves the most…}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1643785036|title=The Wondrous Apothecary|author=Mary E Martin|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Those who knew him well) have known Alexander Wainwright, the landscape artist famous for his Turner prize winning ''The Hay Wagon'', and Rinaldo, renowned conceptual artist would say that they're chalk and cheese, if not sworn enemies. If you've watched the relationship, as has our narrator, art dealer Jamie Helmsworth, you'd have said that they were magnets, drawing and repulsing each other in equal measure. Wainwright was at the socially acceptable end of the artistic continuum, but with Rinaldo it was all too obvious that there was acting as but a volunteer steward at Warwick Racecourse when fine dividing line between conceptual art and public nuisance. As time has worn on, he was told 's frequently been brought to the attention of the violent death police. On this latest occasion we see him charged with arson and theft of ''The Hay Wagon''.}}{{Frontpage|author=Mary H.K. Choi|title=Permanent Record|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary=Pablo, a college drop-out, is working at a New York bodega. He's massively in debt, he's avoiding his mother, and he finds his muchjoy in creating unusual snacks with random ingredients! Whilst working one evening, he's surprised to discover that the girl he is chatting with as he serves is a super-loved wifefamous pop star and, as unlikely as it may seem, they start a relationship. It would get worse though: With one character who is trying very hard not to be seen or noticed by anyone, and the successful insurance actuary would be accused of killing her other who is seen and followed and hounded by everyone all over the mediaworld, it's an interesting clash as they come together. Then This isn't just a love story though, and actually it's really just Pab's story, about the journey he would lose takes in his life via his job meet-up with Leanna Smart.|isbn=0349003459}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1609809319|title=Long-Haired Cat-Boy Cub|author=Etgar Keret, Aviel Basil and Sondra Silverston (translator)|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=One day a boy is in the zoo with his father, when the man gets called away on urgent business. The boy isn't hustled into a cab and taken homefirst, though, no – he's given hot dog money, and taxi money, and told to just stick around on his own and enjoy himself. His best friends would turn against Well, it's no surprise that the orphan-for-an-afternoon sensation the lad feels doesn't make himhappy, and so he thinks of a species name for himself, and curls himself up into an empty cage, as if he were a new exhibit. And it's then the drama begins… }}{{Frontpage|isbn=1785785516|title=Fucking Good Manners|author=Simon Griffin|rating=4|genre=Lifestyle|summary=Manners maketh man, they say. It certainly makes life easier if everybody abides by a set of conventions, some of which are ages old and other which have evolved over time. Manners are not about how much to tip or how you should behave if you get an invitation to Buckingham Palace, they came have nothing to believe him guilty of do with class or financial status: they're about getting the murderbasics right before we try to deal with more difficult matters. Yet there was no really compelling evidence that he was guiltyOf course we all have more relaxed manners when we're with family and friends, but it's best if we learn to distinguish between our public and private lives and to act appropriately. ''Fucking Good Manners'' aims to help us on the way.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=19087458190008324859|title=SurfacingFowl Twins|author=Kathleen JamieEoin Colfer
|rating=5
|genre=HistoryConfident Readers|summary=Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain bookRelax, they tell you ''this one has your name on it''. Mostly we take them at their word, or noteveryone – our old friend Artemis may be off planet, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so, unless it turns out that we didnthe baddies aren't like getting away with skulduggery any time soon because they now have not one but two members of the book. That's a rare experienceFowl family to contend with. People who Those cute little twins are sensitive to hearing a book calling your namenow eleven (and, frankly, rarely get it wrong. In cute no longer) and in this case I was told why. The blurb speaks of the author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not their first independent adventure, they meet a bad description of where I am. Add troll and without even trying manage to that my love of make two deadly enemies: a nobleman obsessed with immortality whatever the natural worldcost (to other people), of those aspects of the poetic and lyrical that an unusual interrogator-nun. The boys are about style chased, kidnapped, arrested and even killed (though not formfor long), and substance most all with the help of all, about connection. Of course this book had my name on it. It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quicklyone trainee fairy.
}}
