ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

DAILY BLOG

  • LITERARY COFFEE: D.H. Lawrence

    “Let us go into the town,” he said, and he rushed her into a train, moving to the town station. They went to a cafe to drink coffee, she sat looking at people in the street, and a great wound was in her breast, a cold imperturbability in her soul. ~ D.H. Lawrence. The Rainbow. Read more

  • The Cost of Everything and the Value of Nothing

    Last September here, I wrote a post about my attempt to understand and appreciate the “new” baseball stat of WAR, or Wins Above Replacement. Here is a link to that article. Now, after a year more of struggling to understand it and why it has become so widely accepted, here is how I am thinking 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

  • FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Anthony Marsella

    “Show, by your actions, that you choose peace over war, freedom over oppression, voice over silence, service over self-interest, respect over advantage, courage over fear, cooperation over competition, action over passivity, diversity over uniformity, and justice over all.” ~Anthony Marsella 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

  • 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

  • LITERARY COFFEE: D.H. Lawrence

    The young people flocked out into the mysterious night. There was sound of laughter and voices, and a scent of coffee. The farm-buildings loomed dark in the background. Figures, pale and dark, flitted about, intermingling. The red fire glinted on a white or a silken skirt, the lanterns gleamed on the transient heads of the 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