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1.09k reviews for:
The Comfort of Crows (Reese's Book Club Pick): A Backyard Year
Margaret Renkl, Billy Renkl
4.2 AVERAGE
1.09k reviews for:
The Comfort of Crows (Reese's Book Club Pick): A Backyard Year
Margaret Renkl, Billy Renkl
4.2 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
emotional
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
I read this slowly over a year, staying as true to the seasonal weeks this book is divided into as possible. Every opening chapter is accompanied by artwork. This book celebrates seasonal joys and sorrows, with thoughtfully reflective moments and natural observations.
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Nearly forty hears have passed since I was in college, and I find myself thinking of the undergraduates who plod through the landscape that welcomed me at their age, a landscape so altered as to bewilder me when I visit. In years to come, will they remember with nostalgia what must seem even now like a magnificent chorus of birdsong pouring down from the trees? Are we all, generation upon generation, destined to mourn what seems in this moment impossibly abundant but is already far on its way to being gone?
Apocalyptic stories always get the apocalypse wrong. The tragedy is not the failed world's barren ugliness. The tragedy is its clinging beauty even as it fails. Until the very last cricket falls silent, the beauty-besotted will find a reason to love the world.
This book is beautiful and inspiring and depressing. It deserves to be read the way it was written, as a devotional with the weekly entries coinciding with the seasons, starting at Winter Solstice. It seems like such a perfect fit for my neighbor that I plan to gift her a copy at the end of this year. (Unfortunately, my library copy needs to be passed on to the next person on the hold list. It was a little unsettling to read about summer in Tennessee surrounded by snow and freezing temperatures.)
Margaret Renkle may not be for everyone. For example, if [b:Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life|40725379|Animal, Vegetable, Miracle A Year of Food Life|Barbara Kingsolver|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1530799548l/40725379._SY75_.jpg|1582285] is not your jam, you should probably skip this one. Like Barbara Kingsolver, Renkle is a liberal writer who clearly feels superior to those who don't live the same way she does. She rails against her neighbors who use pesticides and herbicides, pull out native plants and plant grass, etc. I completely agree with her, but her holier-than-thou attitude might rub some the wrong way.
But...her prose is a thing of beauty:
Stop and consider the deep hollows of the persimmon's bark, the way the tree has carved its own skin into neat rectangles of sturdy protection. See how the lacy lichens have found purchase in the channels, sharing space in the hollows. Tree and lichen belong to one another. Neither is causing the other any harm.
And:
The purple-tinged stalks pop out of the ground with their foliage tightly furled, but very soon the leaves will open up like a teenager who has learned she's beautiful, like a lonely person finally loved. The striped leaves are all you notice at first, the perfect embodiment of springtime: cool and green and growing. Then, in a day or two, the white flowers appear, dainty and delicate, miniature bells nodding toward the damp soil on purple stems, nearly hidden under the showy leaves.
The accompanying artwork by her brother (Billy Renkl) is also lovely.
Apocalyptic stories always get the apocalypse wrong. The tragedy is not the failed world's barren ugliness. The tragedy is its clinging beauty even as it fails. Until the very last cricket falls silent, the beauty-besotted will find a reason to love the world.
This book is beautiful and inspiring and depressing. It deserves to be read the way it was written, as a devotional with the weekly entries coinciding with the seasons, starting at Winter Solstice. It seems like such a perfect fit for my neighbor that I plan to gift her a copy at the end of this year. (Unfortunately, my library copy needs to be passed on to the next person on the hold list. It was a little unsettling to read about summer in Tennessee surrounded by snow and freezing temperatures.)
Margaret Renkle may not be for everyone. For example, if [b:Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life|40725379|Animal, Vegetable, Miracle A Year of Food Life|Barbara Kingsolver|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1530799548l/40725379._SY75_.jpg|1582285] is not your jam, you should probably skip this one. Like Barbara Kingsolver, Renkle is a liberal writer who clearly feels superior to those who don't live the same way she does. She rails against her neighbors who use pesticides and herbicides, pull out native plants and plant grass, etc. I completely agree with her, but her holier-than-thou attitude might rub some the wrong way.
But...her prose is a thing of beauty:
Stop and consider the deep hollows of the persimmon's bark, the way the tree has carved its own skin into neat rectangles of sturdy protection. See how the lacy lichens have found purchase in the channels, sharing space in the hollows. Tree and lichen belong to one another. Neither is causing the other any harm.
And:
The purple-tinged stalks pop out of the ground with their foliage tightly furled, but very soon the leaves will open up like a teenager who has learned she's beautiful, like a lonely person finally loved. The striped leaves are all you notice at first, the perfect embodiment of springtime: cool and green and growing. Then, in a day or two, the white flowers appear, dainty and delicate, miniature bells nodding toward the damp soil on purple stems, nearly hidden under the showy leaves.
The accompanying artwork by her brother (Billy Renkl) is also lovely.
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
I loved it but I think I would love it even more if I just read one essay per week throughout the whole year, as this is the structure of the book. Lyrical language and a deep connection to the joys of nature while still recognizing all we have lost and the damage we've done made this right up my alley.
Margaret Renkl’s writing is a spiritual attuning to the world around me. Her eloquent prose inspires me to more closely notice and also gives me hope.
medium-paced
If
a
poetry
fan, it's very intuitive. Non-
written.
a
poetry
fan, it's very intuitive. Non-
written.
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced