Welcome to Litsy!

Never contemplated whether some sheep could swim, does the wool weigh them down or make them buoyant? 🤔 🐑🏊‍♂️

Today's 'scratched my brain just right' sentence. 🎨

This really lovely book is by a woman who has been a shepherdess for over 20 years focusing on pastoralism in Vermont. It‘s meditative and delves into her deep connection with the land. It reminds me totally of Raising Hare. I loved it.

#NBAlonglist, nonfiction

A true religious pilgrimage, even if confined to the few square miles around Tinker Creek, near Dillard's home in Virginia. The journey here is internal. This is the best nature writing I've ever had the pleasure to read, not an ounce of sentimentality or nostalgia, no rote cliches about nature's grandeur. It is grand though, and ugly and mystifying and disgusting and beautiful. Life's mysteries distilled into one tiny plot of land.

Recent acquisition for our personal library.

Take a deep dive into different aspects of bird intelligence. I enjoyed learning about many birds native to my area from blue jays and chikadees to crows, and many I am not familiar with as well. The author takes a look at intelligence in birds' natural habitats, as well as intelligence shown for human purposes. #Birds #Nature #Nonfiction

I understand why Humphreys titled the book The Ghost Orchard. It is absolutely the strongest section (followed by that on Robert Frost, and The Imagined Discovery of the White Winter Pearmain). The way in which she grafts the story of her relationship with both her friend and her father, and their deaths, onto the story of the apple is brilliant. The Parafilm that seamlessly binds the stories is Frost‘s friendship with the poet Edward Thomas.👇🏻

"The world would count itself lucky if we were vultures or crows. An actual vulture turns death into feathers, and actual crow turns flesh into flight."

“It was all praise and miracle. Edward Thomas was right about a line of apples being the same as a line of poetry in another language.”