ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

BOOK REVIEWS

  • FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Auden on Detectives

    Completely satisfactory detectives are extremely rare. Indeed, I only know of three: Sherlock Holmes(Conan Doyle), Inspector French (Freeman Wills Crofts), and Father Brown (Chesterton). The job of the detective is to restore the state of grace in which the aesthetic and the ethical are as one. Since the murderer who caused their disjunction is the aesthetically defiant individual, his opponent,… Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: “The Wayward Bus” by John Steinbeck

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on June 23, 2020. Last week after finishing In Dubious Battle, I continued my Steinbeck-binge by getting The Wayward Bus.  Like Cannery Row and In Dubious Battle, this was another book I had first read 45 years… Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee Scenery

    I found Big John and Doc on a small flagstone patio that opened off the kitchen. They were seated at a large glass topped, wrought iron table and there was a huge pot of coffee on a hot plate at Big John’s elbow. The view from the patio was of the tumbled mountain range north… Read more

  • FRIDAY FOOD FOR THOUGHT: DANA GIOIA ON STORIES

    “There are some truths that we can only express to one another in stories. These insights need to be embodied in action, character, and circumstance. Otherwise the truths seem vague and unconvincing. To say “You can’t avoid your destiny despite your best efforts” is a dull platitude, but the tale of Oedipus, who mistakenly kills… Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: “In Dubious Battle” by John Steinbeck

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on April 30, 2020. On the edge of Butte, Montana, in the Mountain View Cemetery, there is a gravestone for labor organizer/martyr Frank Little. On August 1, 1917, he was pulled from a boarding house… Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee Manners

    I was about to apologize for having disturbed him in the middle of the night, then decided it would be better to play it tough. Big John had said I had “manners.” A certain amount of manners would be okay. But guys just didn’t come real polite in the heavy rackets and courtesy could be… Read more

  • FRIDAY FOOD FOR THOUGHT: P.D. James on The Art of Short Stories

    The scope of the short story is inevitably restricted and this means it is most effective when it deals with a single incident or one dominant idea. It is the originality and strength of this idea which largely determines the success of the story. Although it is far less complex in structure than a novel,… Read more

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: “Cannery Row” by John Steinbeck

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on April 26, 2020. When I was in 8th and 9th grade (50 years ago now!) I read a lot of John Steinbeck. Everything the small Broadwater County Library had. The library. which was cramped… Read more

  • Hardboiled Coffee On the House

    “You want a cup of coffee?” “I wouldn’t mind.” Phoebe returned to the urns and drew a cup and brought it back. Purvy watched her broad hips going and coming under the white uniform, but he didn’t get the pleasure out of it that most fellows would have got. He stuck his nose into the… Read more

  • FRIDAY FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Stephen Jones on Silence

    During my first few visits [to the Sand Hills of Nebraska] I experienced a persistent ringing in the ears as my hearing adjusted to the absence of background noise-the roar of cars, airplanes, and machinery that has become a subliminal part of our daily lives. – Jones, Stephen R.. The Last Prairie: A Sandhills Journal. Read more