ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

March 2025

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “Rides a Stranger” by David Bell

    I have said here before that Bibliomysteries are one of many subgenera that are always in my wheel-house. Books, bookstores, libraries, book collecting make the perfect subject and setting for mysteries. David Bell’s stand-alone, short story, “Rides a Stranger” is a great example of the Bibliomystery sub-genre. Don and his father shared a love of Read more

  • What Matters

    Believe it or not, this blog posting for the first Saturday of March 2025 is actually being written on December 23rd, 2024. That is how far ahead I am working now on ClimbingSky. I am not certain if that is a good thing or a bad thing from a reader’s point of view. But for Read more

  • FRIDAY FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Hank Aaron on Failure

    “Failure is a part of success. There is no such thing as a bed of roses all your life. But failure will never stand in the way of success if you learn from it.” – Hank Aaron Read more

  • Kirby

    On this day in 2006, Kirby Puckett died at the young age of 46. In honor of Kirby, I am reposting this that I wrote and posted in July here at ClimbingSky: I was lucky enough to move to the Twin Cities and to begin going to Twins games regularly in 1986. That meant I Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “The Euthanasia of Hilary’s Aunt” by Cyril Hare

    The Short-Story form allows writers to be more “playful” than they could be in a longer form. TExperiment, even cheat a little, if you will. All in the name of entertainment. Cyril Hare was the pen name of Alfred Clark a barrister and a member of the famous Detection Club. He wrote a number of Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “Bread Upon the Waters” by A.A. Milne

    One of the most enjoyable things about reading short story anthologies is the number of pleasant surprises you get. In the Golden Age of Detective Fiction (the 1920s & 1930s) everyone who wrote in Britain tried their hand at mysteries. Even Winnie-the-Pooh’s famous creator, A.A. Milne. Milne’s short story “Bread Upon the Waters” is an Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee Morning

    I dressed quickly and followed her into the kitchen. She had coffee ready and handed me a cup, knowing by my face that something was wrong. She didn’t ask. She waited until I was ready. I said, “I had a friend who was killed last night. I know how, I know why and I know Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: The Corpse in the Waxworks by John Dickson Carr

    I recently reviewed the John Dickson Carr novel Castle Skull here at ClimbingSky, which I liked very much. When I went online to my local library to find another book in the British Library Crime Classics Series to read this Carr novel, The Corpse in the Waxworks, immediately caught my eye. In The Corpse in Read more

  • Musings on The Game

    With Opening Day less than a month away, my mind turns more and more to The Game. This year the teams that I will be following most closely are: The Twins collapsed last year due to a combination of injuries and poor situational hitting. They enter this season with injury questions around three key position Read more