Welcome to Litsy!

On paper, this memoir full of nature writing should be a slam dunk for me…those are two of my favorite nonfiction genres. However, I didn‘t love the execution of Macdonald‘s journey through grief after the loss of her father. She trains Mabel, the hawk, musing on the impermanence of life and our fragile little selves. Animals handle life and death better than we human beings. I think my expectations were too high, based on awards this received.

I wouldn‘t use this in my class because I could barely finish it myself

Couldn‘t keep my attention. Wasn‘t interesting enough for me

I do love a how many have you read type list! Even if, as many have pointed out already, this one is very skewed. And of course heaven forbid we get genre cooties on our Serious Best Books list (except Jemisin cause she's exceptional but don't worry Cloud Atlas can't possibly be genre [except it totally is] cause David Mitchell is a Serious Literary Author don't you know - but definitely no romance or fantasy or YA or *gasp* all three!)

I liked the parts of this that were memoir of Helen‘s life, her childhood and love for her dad, her fascination with hawking from a young age, and her experience raising and working with goshawk Mable.

As other reviews have said, I could have done without most of the parts about TH White. I ended up skimming a lot of that, and don‘t think the book needed that much info about him.

I am interested in her other books.

Good morning from Sietje 🙂🐕

It's not the tagged book, but it's edited by the same author.

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#midwintersolace #naturalitsy I LOVED this book. I think it was the cover that grabbed me, then I realized HM wrote this about her grief journey when her father died suddenly. My father had died suddenly and I was ( with my sister) suddenly aware of how much work my father had been doing to support my mom and her declining health ( she eventually was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia). Absolutely no falconry aspirations but I got the grief

In the first of her FBI K-9 books, Sara Driscoll gives us a fluffy thriller with enough meat on its bones to make it interesting. The details about K-9 tracking and search/rescue are fascinating. Chapter heads provide detailed snippets about the process. Megan Jennings, and her canine partner Hawk are called to the scenes of terrible bomb blasts and fires and then involved in the search for, and ultimate apprehension of the madman. Fun read,