The Dark Side of the Dale by Tony Kearney. It's a history of the Derwent Valley on the Durham/Northumberland border where I live. It's absolutely fascinating and very well written. It bowls along at a fast pace and is full of human interest stories which brings local history to life. It's starts with the Roman occupation and goes right through to the twentieth century. Makes me want to put on my boots and go out and explore.
Everything Trump Touches Dies. By Republican Strategist Rick Wilson I must have had this a couple of months. It's a new edition with added material. Saw it praised in The Register Forums. It wasn't available here yet but I ordered it from the US. I've read about 10 books while it's been sitting nearby because, excellent as the reviews are, I've been reluctant to start it because I don't like being impotently angry. Putting it off, in other words. Well, I've got to the bottom of the pile of books and turned to page one, the introduction. To quote: If you're like me, the Trump Presidency has turned you into a light sleeper. Admit it. Some nights, when the world is quiet but your mind is racing, you check Twitter to see if he's started a nuclear war. Each morning, strung out from the fever dreams of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon performing a nude interpretive dance of Stephen Miller's "Triumph of the Wall", you wake up wondering if today's the day he's seen wandering naked on the White House lawn, screaming at clouds. Come on. You know you've done it. It's because you're struggling, like the vast majority of Americans, with the fact that our terrible, sloppy, shambolic president may just be insane. Not "Haha, he's so crazy" or "He's pretending to be crazy, but it's actually 87-dimensional quantum chess" crazy, but legitimately, clinically insane. I'd have to look up the DSM-V category to be more precise, but the term of psychiatric art I'm looking for is "shithouse-rat crazy." Is crazy too strong a term? Perhaps instead you'd like to argue that a man with Donald Trump's dignity, stature, resolute self-control, deep erudition, and modesty presents as a perfectly rational national leader in every way. In that case you'd be correct if the nation in question is some third-world hellhole - pardon me, I meant to use the new term of art, "shithole" - ruled by a President for Life with a penchant for elaborate military uniforms, missile parades, a high comfort level with endemic corruption, relatives installed in positions of power, and a rumored taste for human flesh. Donald Trump, the avatar of our worst instincts and darkest desires as a nation, sits in the Oval Office. I'm reminded of when I said how my ex-local MP Alex Chalk, who seemed genuinely decent, was in the wrong party. The problem was the implication that there was a right party. Likewise Rick Wilson, a Republican. Though the difference in the States is that one lot are mentally incompetent, while the other lot are just incompetent; while here it's just two versions of the same corrupt, dictatorial, useless shitheads.
Just ordered this in paperback cos I don’t do e books and he’s n absolute hero of mine (I didn’t order it off Amazon btw)
The Way the Future Was Autobiography of Frederik Pohl. (Anyone wanting introduction to Frederik Pohl should read Man Plus, if you ask me).
