[image error] My reading list this year, so far, is darker and more nonfiction than I had intended.

I can’t get away from reading some really dark stuff—post-apocalypse novels, nonfiction about the Deep State, our dystopian reality, geoengineering, and alternate news sources that follow the corruption and abuses of our political leaders. It mostly comes, I think, from a desire to know the truth of things and to not be blind-sided by events. What I find revealed in such study, though, are horrors difficult to accept and too big to fight. Or maybe I do fight, in my own way. Maybe the darkness repels me towards the light, and I seek solace in writing, exercise, and spiritual enlightenment. My wife supports me in this. Maybe you have similar feelings. If so, I hope you have some human support, too.

Well, all this has colored my recent readings, which have concerned societal collapse, the world’s dark realities, and spiritual themes.  I haven’t posted reviews on all of them yet, but I will do so and you can follow them on the Arbordin Park Press website. I hope you will find some enlightenment and comfort from my work.

I’ll begin with a fiction. It’s an award-winning post-apocalypse novel called, Station Eleven , by Emily St. John Mandel. Though the book has its dark moments, it is a more hopeful take on its genre than is the usual. It depicts the coming collapse, but with a belief in the ultimate goodness of humanity that outweighs our Mad Maxx proclivities. I’m not that optimistic myself, but I did enjoy that aspect of Ms. Mandel’s story. I also enjoyed the love of the arts that runs through its pages. I took its hopeful theme as a reminder that people can be compassionate, even under difficult circumstances, and that we of the rank-and-file are better than our rulers.

Then there’s another literary thread I’ve been following that deals with our dark reality that will lead to collapse, if not to some dystopian horror beyond what even Orwell imagined. The first book in this vein is Chemtrails, HAARP, and the Full Spectrum Dominance of Planet Earth by Elana Freeland. This book describes the magnitude of the assaults being unleashed on the human populace by their rulers. These assaults include the wielding of Tesla-based technology that weaponizes Earth’s natural energy systems (we see it as constant chemtrail haze, highly selective “wild fires,” and extreme weather events), the spread of health-damaging low frequency radiation (WiFi), and even the mind-blowing, apparently real, concept of transhumanism (or maybe not so hard to believe—the Nazis wanted very much to create Aryan “supermen”). 

Ms. Freeland tells her tale in clear prose, ably handling complex concepts. I found her book so compelling, I started reading her fiction-based-on-fact series about the modern rise of our fascist, neopagan ruling class. The first book in the series is called, SUB ROSA AMERICA and  The Fall  of the New Atlantis Book I: Gone to Croatan . It is not an easy read but does offer much to consider about the nature of the upper-upper classes who rule us and who seek to control us to the microscopic level (along with all aspects of our home planet).

I find Ms. Freeland’s work much related to that of Richard Dolan, whose UFOs and the National Security State books also deal with the secrecy and corruption of our ruling elites. I have reviewed these books of Mr. Dolan’s, and I intend to review another he put out last year: UFOs and Disclosure in the Trump Era . I think his concept of the “Breakaway Civilization” is especially relevant to understanding what’s happening to our world, and it supports the premises of Ms. Freeland’s books.

And then I read the latest book from Whitley Strieber called, The Afterlife Revolution . I think it’s his most compelling work since Communion. It concerns what Mr. Strieber has learned about souls and the nature of reality over the course of his life of paranormal experiences. A lot of that learning came from his wife and co-author, Anne, who died in 2015. It is an inspiring and hopeful book that helps sustain morale in these dark times.

You can see that I’ve done a lot of reading. I had hoped for it to be more of a literary vein, but a fascination with the bizarre nature of world events has kept me in the non-fiction arena. Even so, my writing has continued in the post-apocalypse SF mode and I’m pushing on with my Dentville novel. I hope to pull that to completion this year.

So you can see that I have a number of book reviews to post in the coming months, and I’m sure I’ll also be posting movie reviews. I might also get into a creative writing exercise that I’ll share either through posts on the Arbordin blog or maybe in newsletter issues. This would be mostly of interest to writers, which is basically anyone with an interest in expressing themselves via the written word—my kind of people.
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You can find my review of Station Eleven  here .