In the absence of van life, something completely different

All is well at Bag End, busy in the garden, busy with life, busy being retired. I may have finally got my head around this retirement lark, and started to take it a bit more seriously which means "allowing myself" the opportunity to sit and read all afternoon if I feel like it. Which is what happened yesterday and today. Favourite bloggers often share their latest read, and this is mine:




I do not currently read as much as I have done in past years, mainly because I am resolved to sleep more and put the light out a bit earlier at bedtime (hence the need to curl up in a comfortable chair in the garden for an entire afternoon) therefore this is not my "normal" fare, but if you were to only read one book this year, it should be this one. I have blitzed through it in two days because, whilst scrupilously researched and factual, it reads with the accessibility and pace of a good James Patterson thriller.

I am of an age to clearly remember the growth of CND in the 1970's and the (then radical) protests at at the Women's Peace Camp, Greenham Common. After reading Jacobsen's superb book I am of a mind that this is where the focus of Greenpeace, Greta Thunberg and all other activists should be.

Because "the only way to win is not to play" (War Games, 1983) and humans have learned nothing since that lovely film.

Proper book reviewers have written that in places this is a very disturbing book as the effects of a nuclear explosion on humans, animals, and the world as we know it are described in unflinching detail. In an age where it seems commonplace to become numb to endless death & destruction delivered in the form of a 24-hour news cycle, video games, films and so many other forms of "entertainment" perhaps this should be compulsory reading/listening until enough people sit up, pay attention and say "stop".

If that could happen then Jacobsen would deserve a Nobel, not a Pullitzer (and think how many roads / schools / hospitals could be funded with all the redirected money?)


And now, back to my usual easy-reading cozy mysteries where Jessica Fletcher meets Rosemary & Thyme accompanied by Mary Berry and far too many cookies!