ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

BOOK REVIEWS

  • A Thaw and Re-Reading

    Here in the North Country, we had a few days of 50-degree weather, but yesterday it snowed again. Those few days of warmth, though, were a foretaste of the feast to come. We are told that ICE is drawing down its numbers here in Minnesota, but reports on the ground remain unclear as to whether… Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “Who Killed Zebedee?” by Wilkie Collins

    Wilkie Collins (1824–1889) is an English novelist best known for his two novels: The Lady in White and Moonstone. Both novels are credited with establishing the ground rules of modern Detective Stories. For aficionados of Detective Fiction, like me, both are essential reading. While Lady in White and Moonstone are very long novels, “Who Killed Zebedee?”… Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “Three is a Lucky Number” by Margery Allingham

    Margery Allingham (May 1904 – June 1966) was an English novelist and considered alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh to be one of the “Queens of Crime.” She is probably best known for a series of stories featuring Albert Campion. These include:: Over the years, I have read a number of her Campion stories… Read more

  • POETRY BOOK REVIEW: 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

    If I were ever to teach a class to aspiring American poets, I would have one required text: the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. Hemingway famously wrote in The Green Hills of Africa that all modern American fiction comes from one book, Huckleberry Finn. A similar thing can be said for Walt Whitman and the 1855 edition of Leaves… Read more

  • MORE Thoreau QUOTES

    It is the unflagging beauty of the writing, day after day, that confirms [Thoreau’s Journals] greatness among writers’ journals. ~ Alfred Kazin   I have posted here before that I read and reread Thoreau’s journals the same way I read and reread W.B. Yeats and a few other poets For grounding.. Thoreau’s Journals read like prose poetry. It… Read more

  • POETRY BOOK REVIEW: Chief Joseph of the Nez Pearce by Robert Penn Warren

    “A strange land we wandered to eastern horizonsWhere blueness of mountains swam in their blue–In blue beyond name.” Robert Penn Warren is probably remembered more today as a novelist than as a poet. While it is true that he did win the Pulitzer Prize in 1946 for his famous novel All the King’s Men, he actually… Read more

  • POETRY BOOK REVIEW: Tales from Ovid by Ted Hughes

    At first blush, the marriage between Ovid, that most Latin of poets, and Ted Hughes would seem as unlikely a match as any you could imagine. Not in ability, of course, but in language and temperament. Hughes as a poet has always seemed to me one of the most earthy, physical, and Anglo-Saxon of all… Read more

  • POETRY BOOK REVIEW: Poetry and Ambition by Donald Hall

    The best way to learn about poetry is to read poetry, and to read poets talking about it. With that in mind, over the next month I will be highlighting a number of books that feature poets talking about poetry, beginning with the book Poetry and Ambition: Essays 1982–88 by Donald Hall. The greatest challenge in reviewing… Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: The Dead Shall Be Raised by George Bellairs

    George Bellairs was the nom de plume of Harold Blundell (1902–1982), a crime writer and bank manager born in Lancashire. This is the first of his works that I have read. The Dead Shall be Raised was first published in 1942. It begins with London-based Inspector Thomas Littlejohn going to spend a quiet Christmas holiday in the small town of Hatterworth where his… Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

    I decided this Christmas to reread the familiar Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol. I would guess that I last read it some 40-plus years ago. I wonder if there is a single work of fiction that has had more different adaptations of it filmed over the years. I highly doubt it. The familiar character of Scrooge has become (along with such literary characters as Sherlock… Read more