Here are the current top-most items on my perpetual bedside pile:
- I just finished the novel What So Proudly We Hailed
by South Carolina author James Howard. It is in the “Cozy Catastrophe” genre, and has a victorious Christian message. I love reading books that are prophetically and scripturally sound. This is the second book, which I’ve read recently, in which the author selects Islam as the religion out of which the Anti-Christ and his prophet arise. This book was both fast-paced and thought provoking. It is a bit scant on the “nuts and bolts” of surviving a disaster, but it definitely addresses the “mindset” aspect. In a nutshell, the first chapter begins with an actual dream the author had in 2006: A limited dirty bomb nuclear attack on the United States causes the grid to go down. The author presents his envisioning of what one Christian family could do, with what they already have, to survive a grid-down disaster. The family decides to take a “vacation” on their coastal cruiser off the Coast of South Carolina within 24 hours of the attacks. The father listens to a radio which tells of the Islamic religion in the USA taking advantage of the situation and helping folks while indoctrinating them with Islam and controlling their freedom. Meanwhile overseas, the Twelfth Imam reveals himself and his prophet and unites the Islamic countries worldwide into one Islamic coalition. The story explains how the family deals with this while meeting non-Christian folks who are threats to them, and meeting Christian folks who help them survive/remain free and independent.
- The novel The World Ends in Hickory Hollow by Ardath Mayhar was another recent read. It is even more strongly in the Cozy Catastrophe genre. It was a very enjoyable read. The family in the story had moved back to their roots of homestead living in central Texas before the grid went down from a limited nuclear war. Because this family often loses electricity for days at a time, they think very little of this power outage until they enter their local town on the day of their weekly mail collection and shopping trip and discover the new reality. There were many scenarios in this book that gave me much to think about what may happen in a grid down situation: who to care for and what to do with orphans, acquiring sturdy housing, foodstuffs, discerning who to allow in to the community, defense training, training up the younger generation, dealing with self-appointed lawmen, et cetera. The local bad women made all-too believably wicked villains.
- A homeschooling guide that we often refer to is the Rainbow Resource Center catalog. It is the size of metropolitan phone book. It is an excellent catalog for acquiring anything and everything on nearly any homeschool subject. For folks new to homeschooling or contemplating it, the catalog is also is a great book that gives an overview of the many types of homeschool philosophies and programs and curriculums available. In a sense, it could be considered a modern Codex Calixtinus for homeschoolers.
- I’m right in the middle of reading the new book Crashing the Dollar: How to Survive a Global Currency Crisis
by Craig Smith. It is a well-researched book that spells out the current monetary and credit market policies, and their inevitable conclusion. It is a very, very scary scenario that is being continued at an accelerated pace by BHO and his buddies in D.C. I’d say that this is a good book to give to your relatives that don’t understand the need to hedge their investments with precious metals.