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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
"Old England is an imaginary place... a place imagined by people, and people do not live very long or look very hard. We are very bad at scale... we wipe the hills of history".
Not engaging enough for me - very ‘hawk-y’.
challenging
emotional
sad
medium-paced
I think it was genius to parallel Macdonald's story with White's. This book is both story of grief and depression and of TH White struggling with his own self-hatred.
At times it got a bit lengthy, and as a reader who knew nothing of hawks, I sometimes felt I was hearing the same stories more than once of Macdonald taking Mabel out to fly and her causing trouble by trespassing (not that hawks have any understanding of what tresspassing could possibly be). I felt myself losing the point of it all sometimes.
But regardless, this book did give me exactly what I wanted, which was a new perspective on nature. While I didn't fully buy Macdonald's justifications for having an animal that kills sometimes, it was an unfamiliar mentality to justify a lifestyle I have never had and probably will not ever have, which was fascinating.
At times it got a bit lengthy, and as a reader who knew nothing of hawks, I sometimes felt I was hearing the same stories more than once of Macdonald taking Mabel out to fly and her causing trouble by trespassing (not that hawks have any understanding of what tresspassing could possibly be). I felt myself losing the point of it all sometimes.
But regardless, this book did give me exactly what I wanted, which was a new perspective on nature. While I didn't fully buy Macdonald's justifications for having an animal that kills sometimes, it was an unfamiliar mentality to justify a lifestyle I have never had and probably will not ever have, which was fascinating.
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I struggled somewhat to get through this book. It is a mix of a memoir about grief after the loss of a father, a book on falconry and personal experiences with falconry, as well as reflection on another author’s writings about falconry (the least interesting bit and where I would get bogged down). I wish she had stuck to a memoir where it was focused on how falconry got her through grief- but alas.
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
fast-paced
This book is a great read for bird and nature lovers. My favorite lines: "Everything is so damn mysterious," and "She...(speaking of the Hawk, Mabel) is learning a particular way of navigating the world, and her map is coincident with mine. Memory and love and magic." The author does a nice job of weaving her own process of navigating grief together with the navigational process of her hawk.
In this beautiful book, Macdonald tells the story of attempting to train a goshawk while also grieving the sudden loss of her father. It is a moving book with sudden epiphanies wrapped in excellent prose.
emotional
informative
sad
slow-paced