ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

BOOK REVIEWS

  • BOOK REVIEW: “Jackstraws” by Charles Simic

    Sometimes there are books I just cannot connect with. It is something that happens to me with fiction books all the time. It happens much less often with poetry books. Doubtless this is because of the way I usually choose my poetry books. With poetry, it is easy to pick of a volume, skim pages,… Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “Canon Albric’s Scrap-Book” by M.R. James

    Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936) was a renowned English scholar and author. He made significant contributions to medieval studies and served in prestigious academic roles at Cambridge and Eton. While his scholarly work is still respected, he is most famous for his ghost stories which he published as M.R. James. According to Wikipedia, these ghost tales… Read more

  • Hardboiled Joe

    When she sat down on the stool next to me she nodded toward the counterman and said, “Shorty’s got a heart of steel, mister. Won’t even trust me for a cup of joe until I get a job. Care to finance me to a few vitamins?” I was too tired to argue the point. “Make… Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: “The Usefulness of the Useless” by Nuccio Ordine

    “…those who erect walls, as Jorge Luis Borges reminds us, can easily have books burned.” Written in 2013, Nuccio Ordine’s “little masterpiece” The Usefulness of the Useless is filled with Post-Trump aha moments like the quote above. It also dovetails into a debate being waged in the universities and colleges of America even as I… Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “The Storm” by Kate Chopin

    “The Storm” is a short story by Kate Chopin that takes place in the 19th-century American South. It’s a sequel to “At the ‘Cadian Ball” and explores themes of desire, passion, and the transformative power of nature. Though not published in Chopin’s lifetime, it was included in “The Complete Works of Kate Chopin” in 1969.… Read more

  • Hardboiled Java

    “Right up the street under the el was an all-night hash joint, and what I needed was a couple mugs of good black java to bring me around.” (Spillane, Mickey. My Gun is Quick.) Read more

  • 2025: The Year of the Short Story

    For the past two months, I have been reading a lot of short stories and thinking even more about the Art of the Short Story. It really began with a conversation I had with Sue. She pointed out to me that my habit of regularly abandoning novels amounted essentially to creating my own short stories… Read more

  • Some Quotes from Thoreau

    Thoreau is one the our most quotable writers. It is one of the reasons that those of us who are Thoreau fans re-read him so regularly. Reading “Walking” again I have underlined the following lines (there are many, many more I could include): In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. * *… Read more

  • Friday’s Food for Thought: On Dashiell Hammett

    In his famous 1944 essay, “The Simple Art of Murder,” Raymond Chandler openly acknowledged Hammett’s genius. He properly credited him as “the ace performer,” the one writer responsible for the creation and development of the hard-boiled school of literature, the genre’s revolutionary realist. “He took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into… Read more

  • Book Review: “Vengeance is the Spur” by Harry Whittington

    Vengeance is the Spur, by Harry Whittington, is a “Cowboy & Indian” story. Captain Sam Marshall does not want war with the Apaches. He is trying to find a peaceful solution. But Washington D.C. relieves him of his command and sends a by-the-book Major (and, of course, his beautiful daughter) to take charge of the situation.… Read more