Books you're reading... and should read. | Page 5 | Vital Football

Books you're reading... and should read.

I think I'm frightened enough!

I suspect you're probably not...

US energy department is a massive, massive US department responsible for many many things including the safe handling of nuclear materials and the nuclear power stations and working out if N Korea has weapons that can hit US cities to keeping the lights on in all the cities etc etc.

The day after the election not a single person turned up from Trumps team to take over, nor on day 2 or day 3.

Obama appointed a nuclear phyicist to run the department, Trump appointed a small "landing team" two weeks after the election led by an energy lobbyist who didn't have any security clearance so couldn't be briefed not even on "just the top 5 risks I need to know" (such as a breakdown at a nuclear powerplant)

One guy is quoted in the book who ran the DOE's 6 billion dollar basic science programme:
"We had tried desperately to prepare them, but that required them to show up, and bring qualified people, but they didn't. They didn't even ask for an introductory briefing like 'What do you do?'

You know what happens to almost all the senior level of management at a government department when a new president is elected? They leave, just up sticks and go. All that knowledge and experience in how to run the department just disappears and there was no-one taking over.

Roughly 2 billion US dollars of the DOE budget is spent on tracking and locating weapons grade plutonium and uranium at loose in the world. Between 2010 and 2018 they seized enough material to make 160 nuclear weapons. The department trains every international atomic energy inspector

And on and on it goes. And this department had no handover and no interest in any handover from anyone in Trumps administration it's a clusterfuck of epic proportions and the world is a lot less a secure place because of their incompetence and lack of interest in running a government
 
I'm currently reading "The Salt Path" by Raynor Winn; she writes about her and her husband's walk around the SW Coast Path after they lost their house and business (due to a bad investment) and he was diagnosed with a terminal illness

Previous recent books have centred around TV detectives, including the first stories of Gently, Vera, Dalziel and Pascoe, Banks, and Beck. They're ok, and give an insight into the characters, but not a patch on Frost (frantic, really entertaining) and Wallander both of which I have all the books and read and re read them. Maigret is not bad, either, but they do start to become much of a mutchness
 
I'm currently reading "The Salt Path" by Raynor Winn; she writes about her and her husband's walk around the SW Coast Path after they lost their house and business (due to a bad investment) and he was diagnosed with a terminal illness

Previous recent books have centred around TV detectives, including the first stories of Gently, Vera, Dalziel and Pascoe, Banks, and Beck. They're ok, and give an insight into the characters, but not a patch on Frost (frantic, really entertaining) and Wallander both of which I have all the books and read and re read them. Maigret is not bad, either, but they do start to become much of a mutchness

Oh, I love the Beck books. Of their time, but surprisingly fresh today and also highly influential on that genre of Scandinoir police procedural.

I'd recommend the William Wisting books, as well.
 
Oh, I love the Beck books. Of their time, but surprisingly fresh today and also highly influential on that genre of Scandinoir police procedural.

I'd recommend the William Wisting books, as well.

Thanks, I'll give that a try - I remember now that we did watch a TV series of Wisting

Also, for info, Radio 4 on a Saturday afternoon are broadcasting The Martin Beck Killings - 1 hour dramas - we haven't listened to one yet, but plan to on Sounds
 
I won't be recommending them to Hully. The husband-and-wife team who wrote them were both Marxists!

They wrote alternate chapters and you wouldn't know.
 
I've just started Churchill by Andrew Roberts, a monster of a biography at 1000+ pages. I've only got about 30 pages or so in but it is quite readable, thankfully. The amount of work that must have gone into it is mind-boggling (25 pages in there were already 100 references).
 
If you like US Southern Noir-style police procedurals/crime novels (and who doesn't?), I can recommend the Dave Robicheaux novels by James Lee Burke.

The first 10 or so are outstanding. But after that, I feel he starts just basically re-writing the same book over and over again.
 
Currently reading "The Edge of the World" an eclectic history of the lands bordering the North Sea. Very interesting so far.
 
Reading for a second time James Deegan - Once a pilgrim. His second book Angry sea worth a read too.
 
I don't know these at all. What are they about?

The author was sf but according to the description at the start of the book had no truth whatsoever to do with anyone he knew. After speaking to him said it was very hard to get a publisher to agree to to publish a book on NI ,but it was a great “fictional” read. The angry sea was just a follow on, but easy reading.
 
Don't read much SF these days, but back in the day read quite a lot of Niven - Ring World, etc.

Love the original Foundation Trilogy by Asimov (the follow-ups, not so much). Also, Dune by Herbert is a stone-cold classic (the follow-ups, not so much).

Read pretty much every Asimov book he ever wrote.!
 
Anglo-saxon? Don't you just love predictive text!

Mrs Notty recently sent a text she hadn't proof-read that contained the frankly disturbing predictive text phrase "Felix fondlebottom"

Which anglo-saxon books would you recommend?
Some people may know of the iconic guitarist, Wilko Johnson.
And out of interest, Wilko did a degree in anglo-saxon !
 
Which anglo-saxon books would you recommend?
Some people may know of the iconic guitarist, Wilko Johnson.
And out of interest, Wilko did a degree in anglo-saxon !
A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons - The beginnings of the English nation by Geoffrey Hindley.

It covers the end of the Roman Empire right up to William the Bastard's conquest in 1066.