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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Mental illness, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail
dark
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Gorgeous writing on a topic I never thought I'd find interesting. The audio version is wonderful as it is read by Helen Macdonald herself.
slow-paced
The book is a memoir that touches on personal grief and falconry. After the sudden loss of her father, Helen Macdonald trains a goshawk named Mabel as a way to cope. She becomes connected with the hawk while struggling with grief. To be honest, the book was just ok… What made me feel eh about it was the large section on T.H. White, an author who wrote The Goshawk. At the end of the day, it’s Macdonald’s book, but it felt like, ugh, here we go talking about this guy. I personally preferred her own experiences.
Overall, the book brings up points on how escaping from grief can be dangerous and the need to face grief rather than hide from it. In the end, she realizes healing comes from reconnecting with people not from isolating. So very meaningful messages in this book but I just didn’t love it.
Overall, the book brings up points on how escaping from grief can be dangerous and the need to face grief rather than hide from it. In the end, she realizes healing comes from reconnecting with people not from isolating. So very meaningful messages in this book but I just didn’t love it.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
inspiring
medium-paced
Caution: you’ll probably want to get a hawk after reading this. If you want a temperamental baby that’s a savage killer and may abandon you at any moment.
I am surprised by how long it took me to finish this book but once I picked it up again I weirdly started to connect with and understand what it was about. A beautiful story of love and loss (in which I also learned a lot). The idea of “derealisation” was fascinating to read about and so well articulated. Will give me things to think about for a while
I loved everything about this book, from the info about the author of The Once and Future King , T.H. White and his training manual -- The Goshawk, t0 Ms. MacDonald's failures and triumphs on her road to healing after the death of her father.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Blood, Grief
Minor: Animal cruelty, Mental illness, Death of parent
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
I needed a book that would distract me from the current events I read about every morning. This book, with its themes around history, nature, human vs goshawk nature, and grief kept me very interested and transported away from my own machinations.