ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

BOOK REVIEWS

  • 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

  • Book Review: “Find a Victim” by Ross Macdonald

    I first read Ross Macdonald in the late 80s or early 90s, after reading a lot of Hammett and Chandler. It was a natural progression. For as many have pointed out, Macdonald perfected the hardboiled detective  genre that Hammett invented and Chandler made literarily necessary. The protagonist of Ross Macdonald’s Southern California Noir work is… Read more

  • Book Review: Parade’s End by Ford Madox Ford

    “…there are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade’s End is one of them.”  ~W.H. Auden When I was in college, I had to make a choice one semester between taking Romantic Literature or Victorian Literature. Knowing just enough about everything to get myself into trouble, I chose to take Victorian Literature. Romantic… Read more