Category: Book, Movie, and Web Reviews

Here are the current top-most items on my perpetual bedside pile: I finished reading The Rancher Takes a Wife. (That I described in a previous column.) What a great book! The last part of the story told of some extreme difficulties that Pan (Rich’s friend and business partner) and his wife went through up at the Home Ranch 200 miles from the nearest town. It was a true test of strength and stamina. I won’t tell any more, so as not to give the story away. I highly recommend folks reading these books. I still have to read Richmond Hobson’s …

I’ve had another busy week of homeschooling, re-organizing the house, and several days of fun outdoors in the snow, so I haven’t done as much reading as usual. Here are the current top-most items on my perpetual bedside pile: Today, I finished watching Volume 3 of the Homesteading for Beginners DVD series. This particular DVD covers cooking with long term storage foods, home canned meats, vegetables, and self-raised dairy products, in great detail. Erin Harrison is very down to earth, warm and friendly as she demonstrates, with easy-to-follow steps, how to cook her all-natural recipes. As you watch the video …

Here are the current top-most items on my perpetual bedside pile: I just finished reading the novel Life As We Knew It, a 2006 “young adult” novel by Susan Beth Pfeffer.  It is a survivalist story.  An asteroid strikes the Moon, knocking it out of orbit and closer to the earth.  As a result, the earth’s gravitational forces are changed, causing high tides, tsunamis, earthquakes and major volcanic eruptions.  The coastal cities world-wide are wiped out, weather patterns are completely disrupted, causing floods and droughts, terrible thunderstorms and blizzards and earlier, colder winters.  Food is scarce.  The story is a …

This week I’ve been busy homeschooling and house cleaning, so I’ve slacked off on my usual reading. Here are the current top-most items on my perpetual bedside pile: Well, I haven’t dug in to Survivors, yet. (It had been next on my list.) However, Jim was previewing its second season of the television series this past week, and as I was passing by him in the office, I stopped and watched the first ten minutes with him. The show was very intense and dramatic. So I am suspecting that the book is just as dramatic as the show. I’m presently …

America has been “dumbed down” by 40 years of lamentable Least Common Denominator public schooling and mass media. Here is some evidence: Ezra Klein’s imbecilic punditry. I suggest reading the book: The Dumbest Generation. Here are the current top-most items on my perpetual bedside pile: I just finished Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It was a great read, and quite thought provoking. One thing that struck me is society’s dependence on a handful of high technology specialists, rather than generalists with a broad set of skills and knowledge. People tend to specialize in just one particular field, …

Here are the current top-most items on my perpetual bedside pile: Grass Beyond the Mountains by Richmond P. Hobson, Jr. This is the true story of the pioneering cattlemen that settled the wilderness interior of British Columbia in the 1930s. (This is the region that lies inland from Bella Coola). It is an amazing tale of gumption and perseverance. There is lot in this book about self-sufficiency that will appeal to preppers, as well as being an exciting tale of adventure. I’ve seen that there are a couple of sequels that Jim has promised to tack on to our next …

Here are the current top-most items on my perpetual bedside pile: I just finished reading One Second After by William R. Forstchen, with a foreword by Newt Gingrich. This is a novel based on the the after-effects of a high altitude EMP blast that wipes out North America’s power grids one spring afternoon. It focuses on the aftermath in a small town in western, North Carolina. It was written with the literal intent to inform and raise the awareness of the American public to the very real danger our country could face from an EMP attack. The storyline was intensely …

Since marrying Jim, I’ve started watching some of his collection of movies on DVD. Jim says that seeing them will help give me “a common frame of reference”. A few of them he even considers survivalist training films. I suppose that the endeavor will also keep me from giving him odd looks when he quotes lines from his favorite movies out of the blue. Recently, I’ve watched: Big Trouble in Little China. Parts of this movie really creeped me out. Yes, it seems John Carpenter (the same director who made The Thing) couldn’t resist including horror elements in even this …

Dear Editor: There is a wonderful source for free e-books called Project Gutenberg.  The books are free because the Copyright for these books has expired in the United States. (They may still be copyrighted in other countries). So anybody may make verbatim or non-verbatim copies of those works.   This is a wonderful source of information.  They will even send free cds and dvds that have as many as 29,000 books each if you request.  You can find books on a multitude of ‘How To’ subjects from a time when doing it yourself was the only option.    Of course you can …

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 …

James, I’m writing to recommend the Surviving Disaster series. It was a simulation of real life disaster situations produced by Spike. Hosted by former Navy SEAL Cade Courtley, each episode retells situations in a worst-case scenario and what viewers can do to survive them. There have been ten episodes aired to date. The series was not picked up for a second season. Spike TV has the entire season available online. I have found this show to be quite helpful should you ever be caught in any of those situations. Enjoy, – KJP

This new column is where I will list–and sometimes include short reviews–the books, periodicals, web pages, and catalogs that I’m currently reading. There will also be occasional mentions of DVDs that we’ve watched. We don’t own (or desire) a television, but we do have a Netflix subscription. (We watch DVDs on our laptops.) Our evenings here at the Rawles Ranch are very quiet, especially in the winter months. We’re all voracious readers. Here are the current top-most items on my perpetual bedside pile: Or Perish in the Attempt: The Hardship and Medicine of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Dr. David …