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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
|isbnauthor=1401280048Seishi Yokomizo and Louise Heal Kawai (translator)|title=Batman: Nightwalker: The Graphic NovelHonjin 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=1782275002}}{{Frontpage|author=Marie LuCixin Liu|title=Death's End|rating=5|genre=Science Fiction|summary= If I'd been paying more attention when I picked this book up, Stuart Moore 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 Chris Wildgooseit'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=Simon Kernick
|rating=4
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=Ray Mason is in prison awaiting trial for murder and he's 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 Mason is injured in a riot. On his way to hospital he's broken free by armed men and an offer is made to him. He's to assassinate the man who is likely to become the country's next prime minister and he'll then be given a new identity so that he can start afresh abroad. His 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 would be better if Alastair Sheridan was dead.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Akwaeke Emezi
|title=Pet
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=The young man called Bruce Wayne is a very noticeable one – he can hardly go anywhere without people – bystanders, paparazzi, and suchlike – reminding him he's a billionaire at of the town Lucille believe that all the age of eighteenmonsters are gone. Feeling rather stuck with Their children are raised to understand that they were saved by the legacy he's inherited from his murdered parentsangels, those who rid the town of evil, he wants to do charitable deedsand there are no monsters anymore. But one nightday, when he speeds off in his posh new car in pursuit of a criminal, he goes too far as far as the authorities are concernedJam accidentally cuts herself, and gets given the most unlikely stretch bleeds a little onto one of community service instead – cleaning in the home for violent criminals that is Arkham Asylumher mother's paintings. There he learns of some other people who also allege charitable intent – the NightwalkersThe blood awakens a bizarre, a gang who steal any tenterrifying-figure bank account contents they canlooking creature named Pet, who somehow comes to life and murder declares that it is here to hunt the ownermonster. Can he get close Though Jam tries to convince it that all the monsters are gone, Pet is certain that there is one of them , still, and get that the truth monster is hiding in the home of their schemesher best friend, or will the manipulative Madeleine be a step too far for the young do-gooder?Redemption.|isbn=0571355110
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B07W4MNBSG1686751680|title=Be Careful Who You MarryMy Mummy does weird things / Maman fait des choses bizarres|author=Lizzy MumfreyAmelie Julien and Gustyawan
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionFor Sharing|summary=Which child doesn't think that there mother is, well, ''weird''? It was coming up to Halloween might be that in 1987 and a group of sixththe morning their mother doesn't like speaking much, when every self-form schoolgirls wondered what they would be doing respecting child knows that that is when they were fifty. When you're only seventeen that seems positively ancient, but Liz was convinced that at your brightest with lots to say? ''Why''your entire life depends on who you marrythen does Mummy stick her fingers in her ears? Then there's doing yoga in front of the television, which could be worrying if it wasn't so funny. The only eligible boys were We won't go into too much detail about what goes on in the Young Farmers bathroom and the idea of living in a farmhouse and having a couple of children called Will colour changes which have occured when Mummy emerges and Olly appealed to Charlottefrankly, or perhaps William and Oliver if you were Elizabeth who was determined to marry the rather superior Patrick Shepley-Botham. The place less said the better about her reactions to start their search was obviously your artistic efforts on the Young Farmers' Halloween disco that weekendwall. There was just one problem - there were too many Elizabeths in the class.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=Michael 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 Rabbits' Rebellion
|author=Ariel Dorfman and Chris Riddell
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=We're in the realm of the rabbits, only the foxes and wolves have taken over. King Wolf, His Wolfiness, has declared the rabbits don't exist, but the pesky birds have spread rumours from awing that the bunnies are in fact still around. Demanding a propaganda spree, King Wolf orders a humble monkey to be his official portrait photographer, but whatever the poor innocent monkey prints out in his darkroom there is a distinct leporine hint. 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=Michael J MaloneInnosanto Nagara|title=In The Absence of MiraclesM is for Movement
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersEmerging Readers|summary=John Docherty's mother has been taken into Set in Indonesia, in the not too distant past, this is a nursing home following a massive strokestory about social change. It Dealing with some difficult issues, such as political corruption and nepotism, the book is thought unlikely that she will ever be able to live independently againneither boring nor preachy. Faced It educates gently, with having to sell the family home in order to pay for her nursing carevibrant, challenging illustrations, Docherty starts the clear out. In the attic he finds a childhood picture of himselfand it portrays how social movements need people who will try, holding a toddler – a toddler he knows nothing abouteven when it seems that they will fail. He also finds The message is a blood-stained shoepositive one; that in an increasingly uncertain world, we do still have the power to instigate change.|isbn=191237479X1609809351
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=06928535451780724047|title=The Things We DoA Dictionary of Interesting and Important Dogs|author=Kay PfaltzPeter J Conradi
|rating=4
|genre=Pets
|summary=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 dog who wasn't interesting or important - and probably both, I was expecting a massive tome. But ''A Dictionary of Interesting and Important Dogs'' is actually ''a rich compendium of the world's most significant and beloved dogs'' and it's certainly a rich treasure trove. We begin with Peter J Conradi's four collies: Cloudy, Sky. 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
|genre=Crime
|summary=It's when we read that a young boy is creeping reluctantly to 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 horrific fashion. When he reached Captain Edmund's bedroom he found the man dead on the floor, the top of his skull missing. The school's initial reaction was that this was a dreadful accident: there had been a cull of kangaroos in some nearby fields and it was obviously a stray bullet which had killed the Captain.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1786695227
|title=Invisible in a Bright Light
|author=Sally 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=ItI'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 2015 and Dr Eleanor Hartley exactly what happens when the two main/only characters meet in a travel agency in Beijing - Carrie is unsuccessfully trying to get a prison psychologist at refund on an extra ticket for the state penitentiary Trans-Siberian train and she knows that her next patient Violet is not going trying to be easyunsuccessfully buy a ticket for the same sold-out journey. 'Jane DoeAs the two team up, travelling through Mongolia, Serbia and into Russia, it could' has ve been convicted of the murder start of two men - one a police officer. She pleaded guilty and since then has been silent: even her identity is in doubt. She was carrying identification as Jane Dunlap when she was arrested, beautiful friendship but this a thriller after all so it's been proved to be false. There seem to be no family or friends who are missing her. Eleanor's task is to get Jane talkingquickly becomes a tale of obsession, to find out why a seemingly normal young woman would murder two menmanipulation and toxic friendships.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Patti Smith1912374838|title=Year of the MonkeyNothing Important Happened Today|author=Will Carver
|rating=4
|genre=BiographyGeneral Fiction|summary=On the coast 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 Santa Cruzstyle 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, Patti Smith enters the lunar year slow-moving nature of the monkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, and unexpected momentsplot makes it feel far larger than its 276 pages.}}{{Frontpage|isbn= williamabbey|title=The Pursuit of William Abbey|author=Claire North|rating=3. In 5|genre=Paranormal|summary=When William Abbey fails to prevent the lynching of a strangeryoung boy in 1880's wordsSouth Africa, he finds himself cursed by the grieving mother. A naïve English Doctor, ''Anything is possible: after allhe slowly learns the weight of the curse upon him, it's as the year shadow of the monkey''dead boy begins to follow him across the world. Never stopping, always growing – it crosses oceans and mountains in pursuit of William. As Smith wanders he finds himself unable to resist speaking the coast of Santa Cruz truths that he hears in solitudeothers, she reflects on a year he also learns that brings huge shifts in her life - loss the dark shadow is deadly – and aging are faced head on, as it seeks to kill the one he loves the shifting political waters in America. |isbn=1526614758most…
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Margaret Atwood1643785036|title=The TestamentsWondrous Apothecary|author=Mary E Martin|rating=4.5|genre=Dystopian General Fiction|summary= Finally! Almost forty years onThose who have known Alexander Wainwright, we have a sequel to [[the landscape artist famous for his Turner prize winning ''The HandmaidHay Wagon''s Tale by Margaret Atwood|The Handmaid, and Rinaldo, renowned conceptual artist would say that they's Tale]]re chalk and cheese, if not sworn enemies. I don If you't want to tell ve watched the relationship, as has our narrator, art dealer Jamie Helmsworth, you too much about the plot because it's a novel d have said that is entirely plot driventhey were magnets, drawing and repulsing each other in equal measure. Suffice Wainwright was at the socially acceptable end of the artistic continuum, but with Rinaldo it to say was all too obvious that ''The Testaments'' takes place fifteen years later, fifteen years after Offred gets into there was but a vanfine dividing line between conceptual art and public nuisance. As time has worn on, not knowing what will happen next. Ithe's told by three narrators: Aunt Lydia, who is secretly writing her memoirs in Ardua Hall; Agnes, a girl frequently been brought up in Gilead with to the expectation she will marry a commander; Daisy, a rebellious teenage girl in Canada who knows attention of Gilead only from school lessons and its Pearl Girl missionaries who occasionally call into the store owned by her parentspolice. On this latest occasion we see him charged with arson and theft of ''The Hay Wagon''..|isbn=1784742325
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Anne BodenMary H.K. Choi|title=The Money RevolutionPermanent Record
|rating=4
|genre= Business and FinanceTeens|summary= Money Pablo, a college drop-out, is changingworking at a New York bodega. It might not be He's massively in debt, he's avoiding his mother, and he finds his joy in creating unusual snacks with random ingredients! Whilst working one evening, he's surprised to discover that the ways you thinkgirl he is chatting with as he serves is a super-famous pop star and, as unlikely as it may seem, they start a relationship. We’re With one character who is trying very hard not suddenly getting a 3p to be seen or £3 coin (noticed by anyone, and the other who is seen and followed and have you ever even found hounded by everyone all over the world, it's an interesting clash as they come together. This isn't just a country that offers anything different to love story though, and actually it's really just Pab's story, about the 1, 2journey he takes in his life via his 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 model?) We’re getting |genre=Confident Readers|summary=One day a lot more digital boy is in the zoo with paymentshis father, which seems when the man gets called away on urgent business. The boy isn't hustled into a cab and taken home first, though, no – he's given hot dog money, and taxi money, and told to suit most people apart from charity collectors just stick around on his own and the homeless on the streetenjoy himself. Well, but although this book has it's no surprise that the subtitle that includes orphan-for-an-afternoon sensation the word ‘’digital’’lad feels doesn't make him happy, it’s not really about this either. Instead it’s about the ‘’management’’ and so he thinks of your financesa species name for himself, and how to take controlcurls himself up into an empty cage, as if he were a new exhibit.|isbn=1789660610 And it's then the drama begins…
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=147117316X1785785516|title=Guilty Not GuiltyFucking Good Manners|author=Felix FrancisSimon Griffin|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLifestyle|summary=The Honourable William Herbert Millgate Gordon-Russell (Bill Russell to those who knew him well) was acting as Manners maketh man, they say. It certainly makes life easier if everybody abides by a volunteer steward at Warwick Racecourse when he was told set of the violent death conventions, some of his much-loved wifewhich are ages old and other which have evolved over time. It would Manners are not about how much to tip or how you should behave if you get worse thoughan invitation to Buckingham Palace, they have nothing to do with class or financial status: they're about getting the successful insurance actuary would be accused of killing her and hounded by the mediabasics right before we try to deal with more difficult matters. Then he would lose his job Of course we all have more relaxed manners when we're with family and his home. His best friends would turn against him, as they came but it's best if we learn to distinguish between our public and private lives and to believe him guilty of the murderact appropriately. Yet there was no really compelling evidence that he was guilty''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.
}}
