ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

BOOK REVIEWS

  • Why We Read Horror

    I have been thinking a lot about why we love and read Ghost Stories, Horror Novels, etc. Here are a few ideas I have come up with: The Thrill of the Safe Scare or “Why fear feels good” Meeting the Monster Within or “How Horror is a mirror to the human psyche” Fear as Connection Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson

    Like Stoker’s novel Dracula, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Gothic-Horror novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a familiar and foundational work of Horror that is much different from the story that has become part of our collective imaginations. And for that same reason. like Dracula it is a book that is good Read more

  • LITERARY COFFEE: Le Fanu

    “I believe that every one who sets about writing in earnest does his work, as a friend of mine phrased it, on something — tea, or coffee, or tobacco. I suppose there is a material waste that must be hourly supplied in such occupations, or that we should grow too abstracted, and the mind, as Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving

    Yesterday I reviewed a “Paranormal Romance” based on Washington Irving’s classic short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” It is only natural, I suppose, that when I finished the unsatisfying reading of yesterday’s “Paranormal Romance” that I would immediately pick up and read Irving’s familiar tale again. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was as good Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: The Murder of Sleepy Hollow by Michele Pariza Wacek

    I have said it here often, I am an indiscriminate reader. That is how I ended listening to part of an audiobook then speed reading (and now reviewing) The Murder of Sleepy Hollow” by Michele Pariza Wacek. According to my research into Wacek and The Murder of Sleepy Hollow, belongs to a sub-genre of fiction Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “Dracula’s Chair” by Peter Tremayne

    I came across Peter Temayne’s perfect Dracula short story “Dracula’s Chair” in a collection called Coffins: The Vampire Archives, edited by Otto Penzler. For a lover of Stoker’s Dracula, it is the perfect anthology. It contains stories by writers like Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, and F. Paul Wilson. Tremayne’s short-story is about a writer who Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

    Sherlock Holmes stories are something I return to quite regularly. In the month of September this year, I reread the Sherlock Holmes novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles. For those who have not read it, the story begins with Dr. James Mortimer visiting Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in London. He presents them with a Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “The Birds” by Daphne Du Maurier

    In August of 1961, I was 16-months old, and lived just between Santa Cruz and Capitola, California. On August 18th of that year in the middle of the night there was an invasion of sooty shearwaters. Apparently confused by the dense fog the birds “invaded” the town, slamming into houses, cars, and stores. Windows were Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “Dracula’s Guest” by Bram Stoker

    “Dracula’s Guest” is a short story by Bram Stoker, first published posthumously in 1914 in the collection Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories.  It is widely believed to be an excised or early draft of the original opening chapter of Bram Stoker’s famous novel Dracula.  It is about a young, unidentified Englishman, en route to Transylvania, found Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: Paperbacks from Hell by Grady Hendrix

    As someone who loves books about books, old paperbacks, and the Horror genre in general, when I first heard about this book a couple of years ago, I had to preorder it. In Paperbacks from Hell, Horror author and vintage paperback book collector Grady Hendrix offers his expert commentary and insights into the kind of Read more