134,826
edits
Changes
Book Reviews From The Bookbag (view source)
Revision as of 17:15, 27 February 2026
, Yesterday at 17:15no edit summary
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1529425905Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The Disappearing Act|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A Voice novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of the Night (A D I Wilkins Mystery)novel form itself.|isbn=1804272329}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0GFQ81YQK|title=How the Sky and the Earth Made People: From the Oral Stories of Malagasy Elders|author=Simon MasonStephanie Zabriskie
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=There's a new Superintendent in Thames Valley — DCS Wainwright—and she's youngBefore people came and joined the animals, there was only the sky and the earth. Everything was quiet until the earth and the sky began to tal to each other. First, ambitiousthe earth created bodies. And then, the sky breathed life into them. These were the first humans and they belonged to both earth and ruthlesssky. She talks a good talk about work/life balance And so people lived between sky and soil and they planted and learned and family valuesremembered, but as far as she's concerned, she has two main problemsespecially how they came to be. When they grew old and died, their bodies returned to the earth and their life returned to the sky. And that is why the earth and the sky are both revered. Only together can they're both called DI Wilkinscreate human beings. Ray Wilkins And that is of Nigerian descentwhy people must pay attention to, Baliol educated and always immaculately dressedcare for, both. He}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0GHPMNF6P|title=The Zookeeper's married to Diane and has twin sonsDragon: A Magical Modern Fantasy Tale for Grown-Ups|author=Carolyn Mathews|rating=4. Management5|genre=Fantasy|summary= When Phil's opinion of him is that father unexpectedly dies, he thinks too highly quits his Canary Wharf finance job to take over the running of himself and his last boss felt that he needed more experience at what he called 'the wet endfamily's farm zoo. Ryan Wilkins comes from He's not expecting much excitement, until he receives an unidentified egg that his new-age stoner uncle Edgar found in a trailer park - cave in factNew Zealand, and suddenly life is no longer quite what it could be said that seems. Then the egg hatches into neither a reptile nor a bird, but a dragon! Now he, Edgar, his mother Abi, and the zoo's never really left part-time café waitress Pearl have to raise this little bundle of scales and joy, despite having no idea how to actually raise dragons and not being able to tell anyone about it. He lives in shell suits But this tiny little dragon may show them love and tracksuits, always connection in vivid colours. Previous management was adamant that he should ''ways they had never'' be given responsibility. Wainwright feels that she would be best shut of both of them.before imagined…
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1787333175Stephanie Zabriskie|title=You Don't Have How Maasai Women Spoke to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji WaterhouseCows: From the Oral Stories of Maasai Elders
|rating=5
|genre=Popular ScienceChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=I was tempted to read ''You Don't Have How Maasai Women Spoke to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This Cows is Going to Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into children’s nonfiction book drawn from the workings oral traditions of the NHSMaasai elders in Ngorongoro, humour and autobiographyTanzania. ''You Don't Have The Maasai are a cattle-herding people and this story writes down its oral tradition explaining how they came to be Mad..so.Cattle are status and wealth in Maasai culture but this doesn'' promised t tell the whole story of the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness intimate and symbiotic connection its people, and especially its women, have with their cows and for the work of a psychiatristnatural world. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but The oral tradition retelling the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered many conversations Maasai women have had with empathy and understandingtheir cows, does. |isbn=B0G9WTGY6J
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Mariana EnriquezLivi Michael|title=A Sunny Place for Shady PeopleElizabeth and Ruth|rating=3.5|genre=Short StoriesHistorical Fiction|summary=Mariana Enriquez writes horror that ''Elizabeth and Ruth'' is disturbingly reala work of historical fiction wrought from the life of the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing best known for her paranormal plots on gritty realities: first novel Mary Barton (1848), a radical critique of the treatment of the working class published under a pseudonym. The ''Ruth'' from Livi Michael's title appears in her settings include an novel as Pasley, a young Irish prostitute who was abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter as a child and finds herself in Manchester's New Bailey Prison after a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentinadifficult and unjust hand at life. The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that Set in Manchester between 1839 and 1842, the novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the Victorian working poor and interrogates the supernatural or otherworldly horror extent to which seeps into the wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these spaces adopts a similarly tangible textureinjustices. |isbn=18035112301784633682
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Onyi NwabineliMakenna Goodman|title=Allow Me to Introduce MyselfHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to It could be argued that the world, thanks pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on social media, where she posted every step the brink of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals losing both his career andhis relationship, basicallyembodies this feeling. However, monetary gainGoodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. Now Anuri The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her his life back, suing her step-mother past tied to take down his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the content protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes heras ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|isbn=1804272205}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0GCB1MQ7D|title=Why My Mother Went Away|author=Alan Kennedy|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=I have often wondered how prominent people came to hold their positions. Anuri is battling alcoholismWith 'celebrities', there's frequently a book they might or might not have written, failing to start her PhDwhich might or might not tell the true story. It's not often that you find a book that gives the full backstory, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online rarely do you discover a memoir where the telling is so perfect that you'll go back and reread paragraphs and receiving money from them sentences, just for doing sothe pleasure the words give. Most importantly, she ''Why My Mother Went Away'' is desperately worried about her little sisterone of those rare exceptions. It's the story of how a boy from the Midlands, who is born at the beginning of the new focus Second World War, would become a Professor of Ophelia's online empirePsychology at Dundee University. Can she save her sisterIn fact, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at he was one of the founders of the same time?|isbn=0861546873department.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=David ChadwickJeremy Cooper|title=Headload of NapalmDiscord|rating=43.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary= It's September 1973 in HicksDiscord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the novel, as with most instances of discord, is easily located. The two protagonists of the novel, Rebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, Californiaare as different as they come. Hicks Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and no-nonsense composer close to retirement, while Evie is a Mojave desert town force of nature, bounding onto the musical scene as a few thousand people precocious saxophonist, oozing with its nearest neighbours of LA talent and Las Vegas both a significant drive awaycharm. Not much happens in Hicks. A silver mine The two, predictably, don't always see eye to eye, their approaches different and a defence contractor are the main local employers but otherwise, thereEvie's progressive views at odds with Rebekah's not much of note other than dive bars and Joshua treesconservative leaning. Life is quietHowever, until...something connects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the clamour.|isbn= B0D321VJ761804272264
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1398527122
}}
{{Frontpage|author=Edward W Said|title=Representations of the Intellectual |rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Edward Said's ''Representations of the Intellectual'' is less a strict theory of what intellectuals are and more a passionate argument for what they should be. Said clearly rejects the comfortable image of the intellectual as a detached expert speaking only to other specialists. Instead, he insists on the intellectual as a public figure, often awkward, abrasive, and unpopular, who speaks truth to power even when it is inconvenient or risky.|isbn=1804272248}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Sylvie Cathrall
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Joan Didion0008551375|title=The Year of Magical ThinkingWhen Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyCrime|summary=This book is Joan DidionLeanne Wilson's heartbreaking autobiographical account body was found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the grief result of a tragic accident. She'd looked so happy, too, when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she endured following was living her husband's sudden deathbest life now. Books Then it emerged that shed light on taboo topics like death are such five other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and sensible people. None of the 'what a beautiful and necessary resource stupid thing to help people feel less do' explanations applied. They were all alonewhen they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's a killer on the loose. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like }}{{Frontpage|author=Paul B Preciado|title=Dysphoria Mundi|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=''It is never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood'' Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self-pity, denial and delusion brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to the new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, it is the proportional, valid response to ''the epistemological and political crack we are living through, and the tension between emancipatory forces and makes them utterly normalconservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The whole text is framed against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, lends them when dysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a human face sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to wear''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.|isbn=00072168581804271454
}}
{{Frontpage
|summary=In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the lives of a group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Through a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a wholly new light.
|isbn=1529922933
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=295967572X
|title=Pale Pieces
|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.
}}
{{Frontpage
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=02416784121035043092|title=The Proof of My InnocenceKilling Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Jonathan CoeAnn Cleeves|rating=45|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=Life after university hasnI can't worked out quite have been the way that Phyl anticipatedonly person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on Orkney. SheIt's back homebeen seven years since we heard from him, but he's now living with her parents Willow Reeves and on a zero-hours contract serving sushi to tourists at terminal 5 their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the daughter of Heathrow Airporthis former partner. All those ideas of becoming a writer seem to have come to nothing. The situation improves when Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'Uncle' Chris comes to stay and introduces Phyl to his adopted daughterbe on maternity leave, Rashida. Christopher Swann (described by some as but when the body of a lefty blogger) popular islander, Archie Stout, is investigating a think tank which originated at Cambridge University found, in the 1980saftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. It plans to push He'd been battered about the government in head with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a more extreme direction and is ready to actmuseum.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor= 1836282028Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The Fighting Spirit|author=Rob KeeleyTower|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=''Would you like to adopt a ghost?How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1739526910Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Where I've Not Been Lost|author=Glen SibleyBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=''One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's lifeEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, he arrives is steeped in an unfamiliar Devon town to recoveranguish and distortion. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday homeEven a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, he dreams becomes evidence of reconnecting with everything he has love lost. But as those tentative plans falterWhen the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me, he becomes swept up in '' it is less an invitation than a local world desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of unlikely friendshipsthis plea is Xavier, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilitiesher ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.''|isbn=1804271934
}}
{{Frontpage
|genre=Crime
|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)
|title=The Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.''
Ernaux's work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the most intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the author was even born. The large and instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied.
|isbn=1804271845
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)
|title=Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Biographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the first section of this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to be. Whom would it help to know how I see this tower, that sea, or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.
|isbn=1804271977
}}
{{Frontpage
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1399613073Olga Tokarczuk|title=Moral Injuries|author=Christie WatsonHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on ''What's the first day good of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of a century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitiousDay, which is a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Anjali is the free spirit House of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them theyNight''re at a drug and alcohol, somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities -fuelled party and it's going the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to end in tragedynight, however quotidian, causing chaos. We don't know who suffered But, the tragedy or the consequences. Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event constant in that will impact image is the three friends. This timehouse, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it's their teenage children who are involvedis perceived.|isbn=1804271918
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=02416366041836284683|title=The Trading Game: A ConfessionBig Happy|author=Gary StevensonDavid Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyDystopian Fiction|summary=If you were to bring up an image of Well! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a city banker in your mindbook, youit're unlikely s nothing like I expected it to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East Endbe, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school it takes me on his CV - but he had been to the London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envywild ride. He also realised And that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at is just what was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship happened with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.}}{{Frontpage|author=Leanne Egan|title=Lover Birds|rating=4.5|genre=Teens|summary=When new girl, Isabel, moves to Lou's hometown of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain for everything around her. A misunderstanding between them leaves them hating each other, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with her, and thatThe Big Happy's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isn't it? Because Lou is straight, isn. I don't she? Even though none want to ruin a similar experience for any of her relationships with boys you reading but I'll have gone very well so far, and sheto at least set the scene. Once that's never had a good kiss with any of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabeldone, and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is fun, and she definitely just hates Isabel, doesn't she?|isbn=000862657XI think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.
}}
{{Frontpage
|summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.
|isbn=0571365469
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn= 1836285493
|title=The Double Life of a Wheelchair User
|author=Rob Keeley
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary= Will is a keen player of video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. But most of all, he is an aspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and one at which he excels. This hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she has suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a couple of afternoons a week at a different school, Station Road, where his ability might be better extended.
}}
{{Frontpage
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you. If that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.
}}
{{Frontpage
|summary=Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the time. But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together.
|isbn=1471196585
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1787333175
|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here
|author=Benji Waterhouse
|rating=5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=I was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, humour and autobiography. ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding.
}}