ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

BOOK REVIEWS

  • BOOK REVIEW: Dracula the Undead by Freda Warrington

    My tendency here so far at ClimbingSky has been to review books, short stories, and poems that I like. But as an indiscriminate reader that is probably not practical. When you add in the fact that I am also a fan of anything to do with Bram Stokers’s Dracula (not necessarily vampires per se), it Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “The Dead Children” by Sabina Murray

    “The Dead Children” is a short-story from Sabina Murray’s excellent collection of Gothic/Horror tales entitled Muckross Abbey and Other Stories. Murray really understands Gothic. The contemporary writer I would most compare her to Susan Hill. She is that good. At a quiet Vermont college Professor Judith is stopped by a woman she initially doesn’t recognize. Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “Reconciliation Day” by Christopher Fowler

    “Reconciliation Day” is a stand-alone short story, written by Christopher Fowler, that is part of a series called Bibliomysteries: Short Tales About Deadly Books. Obsessed with the legendary “blue edition” of Dracula, a rare and supposedly altered version of Stoker’s classic rumored to contain a different ending and a chapter set in Dracula’s library, leading Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: Stoker’s Manuscript by Royce Prouty

    The story of the writing and publication of Bram Stoker’s masterpiece, Dracula, in many ways is as interesting as most fiction. Here is at the basic information of the publication of Dracula: In Stoker’s Manuscript writer Royce Prouty takes the history of Stoker’s manuscript and reimagines its history. The plot of Stoker’s Manuscript centers on Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M.R. James

    Ghost Stories of an Antiquary is a collection of Horror/Gothic stories first published in 1904 by British writer M.R. James. I have reviewed one other short story from the collection, “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book.” Here is a link to that review. James, who was a Medieval Scholar at Cambridge, began writing his “ghost stories” to share Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “Harry” by Rosemary Timperley

    Rosemary Timperley (1920-1988) wrote novels, screen plays, and short stories. She is probably best known for her ghost stories which are frequently anthologized. “Harry” is one of her best ghost stories. The story follows Mrs. James, who adopts a baby girl named Christine. At age five, Christine begins talking to an imaginary friend named Harry, Read more

  • Victorian Technologies in Dracula

    On my rereading of the novel Dracula this year (that I posted about yesterday) one of the details that caught my attention was that Jonathan Harker references having a Kodak. This was a detail I had not noticed before. Since I was listening to an audiobook recording of Stoker’s classic, I double-checked when I got Read more

  • Dracula – A 2025 Check-in

    Another year and another rereading of Dracula. This year my rereading amounted to listening to an excellent, unabridged audiobook version of Stoker’s classic I had not listened to before, an 18-hour, 25-minute version of Dracula featuring Patricia Alison, Rachel Atkins, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jason Forbes, Theo James, Harry Myers, Himish Patel, Jason Watkins, and Richard Reed. Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “The Fourth Man” by Agatha Christie

    During the Month of October, I will again be reviewing Gothic and Horror fiction here at ClimbingSky. I begin this month of reviews with an unexpected surprise from the “Queen of Mystery” herself, Agatha Christie. When you begin a Christie short story, you naturally expect to find yourself reading a detective mystery of some kind. Read more

  • On the Art of Rereading

    “Rereading, not reading, is what counts,” ~ Jorge Luis Borges.  “When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before,” ~ Cliff Fadiman.  ““If a book isn’t worth reading over and over again, it isn’t worth reading at all.” ~ Read more