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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
I struggled to get through this one. Did I learn some interesting facts? Yes. Were there moments of beauty? Absolutely! But there was a lot of summarizing of someone else’s work in every chapter and that was not so interesting for me. I get why it was included… I just could have done without.
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Beautiful writing and loved learning about hawks, but something feels a little icky about using wild animals as a hobby and to find community.
emotional
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
Audiobook read by the author. MacDonald writes about her personal experience of grief by simultaneously embarking on a project to train a goshawk and at the same time examine the life of T.H. White through his own attempt to train and write about training a goshawk. It's a lot for one book to handle, but MacDonald does it beautifully, circling around the three parts of her narrative with careful precision, much like the flight of her beloved hawk.
The writing is superb and moving. MacDonald captures the confusion and irrationality that accompany grief. She brings the reader along as she lives through the months following her father's death, never trying to teach a lesson or tie up meaning in an easy way. Instead she tackles the uncomfortable truths in White's story and embarks impulsively on purchasing a goshawk to train. The parts of the narrative seem disparate but are woven together very well--when she writes about one thing, she reveals something important about another.
Moving. Thought-provoking. Beautifully crafted.
The writing is superb and moving. MacDonald captures the confusion and irrationality that accompany grief. She brings the reader along as she lives through the months following her father's death, never trying to teach a lesson or tie up meaning in an easy way. Instead she tackles the uncomfortable truths in White's story and embarks impulsively on purchasing a goshawk to train. The parts of the narrative seem disparate but are woven together very well--when she writes about one thing, she reveals something important about another.
Moving. Thought-provoking. Beautifully crafted.
I saw this book recommended by BookTuber abookolive and thought it sounded intriguing. Helen Macdonald is experienced with training and flying hawks, but decides to take on one of the tougher birds to fly, a goshawk, after her father dies. Simultaneously, she re-reads "The Goshawk" by T.H. White. She read the book as a girl, but it takes on new meaning for her when she's older and flying her own goshawk, named Mabel.
This is some really gorgeous nature writing that makes me want to seek out more by Macdonald. I listened to it as an audibook read by the author. It was lovely. Highly recommended.
This is some really gorgeous nature writing that makes me want to seek out more by Macdonald. I listened to it as an audibook read by the author. It was lovely. Highly recommended.
I couldn't finish this book, maybe giving up 3/4 of the way through. I was excited to check this out because it's a nature memoir about grief, and one of my favourite books is similar, Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams. Having lost my mother at a young age and as an environmental studies student, I thought this book would be right up my ally. Maybe I simply have no interest in falconry, but I found this book a total bore. Some of the prose was pretty, but that's the only reason I kept reading. It didn't seem to have much of a plot and I had no interest in the narrator. It won a lot of awards, but life is too short to continue reading something just because of high praise.
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced