Down The TBR Hole #1

Down the TBR Hole was originally created by Lost In A Story The idea is to help slim down your Goodreads TBR, because we all know how large and endless that list becomes!

How it works:
– Go to your Goodreads to be read shelf
– Order on ascending date added
– Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books
– Read the synopses of the books
– Decide: keep it or should it go?

1. Guantanamo Diary – Mohamedou Ould Slahi

An unprecedented international publishing event: the first and only diary written by a still-imprisoned Guantánamo Bay detainee.
Since 2002, Mohamedou Slahi has been imprisoned at the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In all these years, the United States has never charged him with a crime. A federal judge ordered his release in March 2010, but the U.S. government fought that decision, and there is no sign that the United States plans to let him go.
Three years into his captivity Slahi began a diary, recounting his life before he disappeared into U.S. custody, “his endless world tour” of imprisonment and interrogation, and his daily life as a Guantanamo prisoner. His diary is not merely a vivid record of a miscarriage of justice, but a deeply personal memoir—terrifying, darkly humorous, and surprisingly gracious. – Goodreads –
✔ Keep
I have always had an interest with the on-goings of Guantanamo Bay so this is right up my alley and I will definitely be keeping it on my TBR.

2. Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime – Val McDermid

The dead talk—to the right listener. They can tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died, and, of course, who killed them. Forensic scientists can unlock the mysteries of the past and help serve justice using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene, or the faintest of human traces. Forensics draws on interviews with some of these top-level professionals, ground-breaking research, and McDermid’s own original interviews and firsthand experience on scene with top forensic scientists.
Along the way, McDermid discovers how maggots collected from a corpse can help determine one’s time of death; how a DNA trace a millionth the size of a grain of salt can be used to convict a killer; and how a team of young Argentine scientists led by a maverick American anthropologist were able to uncover the victims of a genocide. – Goodreads –
✖ GO
I want to keep it but I know that I probably won’t actually read this so I guess this one can go.

3. Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable, and What We Can Do About It – Marc Goodman

Technological advances have benefited our world in immeasurable ways, but there is an ominous flip side: our technology can be turned against us. Hackers can activate baby monitors to spy on families, thieves are analysing social media posts to plot home invasions, and stalkers are exploiting the GPS on smart phones to track their victims’ every move. We all know today’s criminals can steal identities, drain online bank accounts, and wipe out computer servers, but that’s just the beginning. To date, no computer has been created that could not be hacked—a sobering fact given our radical dependence on these machines for everything from our nation’s power grid to air traffic control to financial services.
. – Goodreads –
✔ KEEP
I have always been interested in Cyber Crime and I have read a book about The Dark Net which I really enjoyed and I think this will be similar. You can read the synopsis for The Dark Net here.

4. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal – Eric Schlosser

Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fuelled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled American cultural imperialism abroad. That’s a lengthy list of charges, but here Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.
Along the way, he unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths — from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, and even real estate.
– Goodreads –

✖ Go
Just not very interested in this, I think I added this after watching Supersize Me on Netflix.

5. Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized CyberCrime – From Global Epidemic To Your Front Door – Brian Krebs

In Spam Nation, investigative journalist and cyber security expert Brian Krebs unmasks the criminal masterminds driving some of the biggest spam and hacker operations targeting Americans and their bank accounts. Tracing the rise, fall, and alarming resurrection of the digital mafia behind the two largest spam pharmacies and countless viruses, phishing, and spyware attacks he delivers the first definitive narrative of the global spam problem and its threat to consumers everywhere.
– Goodreads –
✖ GO
There are only so many books about cyber crime that I can bring myself to read and this just seems to be the most uninteresting.

6. The Church of Fear: Inside the Weird World of Scientology – John Sweeney

Tom Cruise and John Travolta say the Church of Scientology is a force for good. Others disagree. Award-winning journalist John Sweeney investigated the Church for more than half a decade. During that time he was intimidated, spied on and followed and the results were spectacular: Sweeney lost his temper with the Church’s spokesman on camera and his infamous ‘exploding tomato’ clip was seen by millions around the world. In THE CHURCH OF FEAR Sweeney tells the full story of his experiences for the first time and paints a devastating picture of this strange organisation, from former Scientologists who tell heartbreaking stories of families torn apart and lives ruined to its current followers who say it is the solution to many of mankind’s problems. This is the real story of the Church by the reporter who was brave enough to take it on. – Goodreads –
✔ KEEP
The world of Scientology seems so bizarre to me that I just need to find out more!

7. The Sociopath Next Door – Martha Stout

Who is the devil you know? Is it your lying, cheating ex-husband?
Your sadistic high school gym teacher?
Your boss who loves to humiliate people in meetings?
The colleague who stole your idea and passed it off as her own?
In the pages of The Sociopath Next Door, you will realise that your ex was not just misunderstood. He’s a sociopath. And your boss, teacher, and colleague? They may be sociopaths too.
We are accustomed to think of sociopaths as violent criminals, but in The Sociopath Next Door, Harvard psychologist Martha Stout reveals that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people—one in twenty-five—has an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. He or she has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. One in twenty-five everyday Americans, therefore, is secretly a sociopath. They could be your colleague, your neighbour, even family. And they can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt.
– Goodreads –
🙈 Maybe keep, maybe go? So I don’t want to remove this from my TBR but i’m also not sure if I will actually read this so I suppose this can just stay in it’s own little limbo.

8. The Silent State: Secrets, Surveillance and the Myth of British Democracy – Heather Brooke

Revealing that the MPs’ expenses scandal of Britain is merely the tip of the iceberg, this title exposes the shocking and often farcical lack of transparency at various levels of government. It argues that without proper access to the information that citizens pay for, Britain can never be a true democracy. – Goodreads –

✖ GO
Being honest just this paragraph bored me so I doubt that I would read this.

9. Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us – Michael Moss

Every year, the average American eats 33 pounds of cheese and 70 pounds of sugar. They ingest 8,500 milligrams of salt a day, double the recommended amount, almost none of which comes from salt shakers. It comes from processed food, an industry that hauls in $1 trillion in annual sales.
In Salt Sugar Fat, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Michael Moss shows how this happened. Featuring examples from some of the most recognizable (and profitable) companies and brands of the last half century–including Kraft, Coca-Cola, Lunchables, Kellogg, Nestlé, Oreos, Cargill, Capri Sun, and many more–Moss’s explosive, empowering narrative is grounded in meticulous, often eye-opening research. – Goodreads –
✔ Keep
I’m really interested in the fast food ’empires’ as well as the use of sugar, especially in children’s food so this one will be staying on my TBR.

10. Pendulum – Adam Hamdy

You wake. Confused. Disorientated.
A noose is round your neck.
You are bound, standing on a chair.
All you can focus on is the man in the mask tightening the rope. You are about to die. John Wallace has no idea why he has been targeted. No idea who his attacker is. No idea how he will prevent the inevitable.
Then the pendulum of fate swings in his favour.
He has one chance to escape, find the truth and halt his destruction.
The momentum is in his favour for now.
But with a killer on his tail, everything can change with one swing of this deadly pendulum…
– Goodreads –
✖ Go
As the first fiction book on this list I expected to keep it, however the synopsis just didn’t excite me so I’m going to be letting this one go.

Phew, that was a serious task! no wonder the majority of Down The TBR Hole memes that I read just use 5 books instead of 10! Overall I ended up removing 5 (1/2) books.
As you may have noticed 9 out of the 10 are non-fiction, I am a sucker for a documentary and that then leads me to books covering similar issues. Sometimes I get carried away and just add all of them to my tbr, when let’s be honest i’m probably not gonna read them it was just because I was in the mood from watching the documentary.
I’ve had a sneak peak at the next 10 (if I can bring myself to do another 10 in one post!) and they are all fiction so we will see if I get rid of as many books as I did this time.

If you have done this meme then please leave a link in the comments I would love to read them. See you in the next post.