ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

DAILY BLOG

  • Book Review: “Far Bright Star” by Robert Olmsted

    There are books you read because of their plot and there are others you read for their tone and style. Far Bright Star by Robert Olmsted is the latter. Like All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy, it is a story of beauty and violence and horses and Mexico. And like All the Pretty Horses (and Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry),… Read more

  • The Ones That Get Away

    As book collectors know all too well, we only regret our economies, never our extravagances. ~  Michael Dirda In 1986, I had just moved to St. Paul, was sleeping on a friend’s floor, and looking for work. One day after a job interview in downtown Minneapolis, I wandered into a used bookstore that has been… Read more

  • Poetry Review: “The Human Seasons” by John Keats

    Late fall has arrived in the North Country. Experience tells us the first true snowstorm of year is not far off. Frost and cold temperatures have already arrived. In matters of metaphor, Art turns toward Nature for illumination. The laws and rhythms of creation are a teacher worth paying attention to – growth toward death,… Read more

  • Green Hills of Africa, by Ernest Hemingway

    “A thousand years makes economics silly and a work of art endures for ever, but it is very difficult to do and now it is not fashionable.”― Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa There remain hundreds of books on my reading “to do” list, yet sometimes I find myself re-reading an old favorite. With poetry this is… Read more

  • To Wild Weekends

    “A wild and crazy weekend involves sitting on the front porch, smoking a cigar, reading a book.” —Robert M. Gates Here’s to wild weekends! Read more

  • Dwelling On or Merely Visiting the Past

    It seems like one of the things that happen as you get older is that you find yourself thinking about the past more often than you had before. The people you have known. The places you have been. The things that you have experienced. In March of this year I spent time with my brother… Read more

  • Gothic vs. Horror

    Trying to define the difference between Gothic and Horror is difficult. Ann Radcliffe once said, ‘Whereas terror is a feeling of dread that takes place before an event happens, horror is a feeling of revulsion or disgust after the event has happened.’ The usual way to look at the difference is that Horror seeks to provoke… Read more

  • This House is Haunted by John Boyne

    The Literary Ghost Story is a noble tradition: The “Signal-Man” and Dickens play an important role John Boyne’s novel This House is Haunted.  It is a well-written “Victorian” ghost story featuring London fog, numerous literary references, and a mysterious country manor. Before the arbitrary distinctions of genre vs. literary fiction, many great writers tried their hand at… Read more

  • Tools of the Trade

    As a writer you need the following tools: May I suggest that coffee is the most important of all! Read more

  • The Mummy MegaPack

    Growing up I regularly watched Saturday matinee movies on television with my brother and my cousins on winter and rainy days. If it was summer, or the weather good, we were expected to be outside in the afternoons, out of the way of  my mom and my various aunts. But if the weather was bad,… Read more