Welcome to Litsy!

It was such a blah day. Raining outside and feeling under the weather. I started listening to this as I worked and it helped the day eek by a bit faster. I love learning about falconry. Birds fascinate me.

wanted nature, wildness, sensation- left something to be desired

I‘ve let this book sit in my TBR pile long enough. Time to swoop in, all puns intended!

I feel bad because I know this is a Booktube darling, but I didn‘t connect with this book. It was beautifully written and is obviously a product of a lot of deep thinking. However, I don‘t have much interest in falconry and I never really understood why the author wanted to take on the challenge of training a goshawk while grieving. I would still say to check it out if you‘ve been wanting to—a lot of people clearly adore it. Just not my thing.

An interesting collection of recommended memoirs. Glad to see the tagged book made the list.

https://lithub.com/the-10-best-memoirs-of-the-decade/

#memoirs #nonfiction #memoirlovers

#7covers7days day 4

I appreciated this more than any memoir I‘ve listened to for a while, but I think most of that is due to it being more. I could relate to the personal journey through grief, but the details of falconry and the literary aspects were much more interesting to me.

#audiobook #memoir #nonfiction #1001books
#Reading1001 #TBRTakedown September 2019

I‘m thoroughly enjoying listening to this book, especially on my evening walks. It‘s an interesting mix of genres, and I‘m continually intrigued by the information about falconry and T.H. White, as well as the other literary references.

#nonfiction #memoir #audiobook #audiowalk

I checked this #audiobook out to listen to just as I was finishing listening to The Once and Future King. It wasn‘t until I was reading other reviews of that book that I realized the author T.H. White is discussed in this book. It‘s a happy coincidence that I‘m following that audiobook with this one, and it‘s adding to my appreciation of both, although not enough to change my rating of the former.

#Reading1001 #TBRTakedown #1001books

Beautiful and raw and honest. This is a brillant memoir! I had to mark so many passages to go back to and mull over more in the days to come.

Compelling memoir about a women who loses herself to grief while raising a hawk, ultimately her hawk helps to heal her. #43 #2019

Starting this next on #overdrive #currentlylistening

1. The Grace of Kings (print) and Daisy Miller (audio)
2. Hmm... it was probably H is for Hawk
3. 6... 5 hardcopy and 1 digital, pretty much the reverse of my usual ratio
#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

This meditation on grief and wildness and memory is gorgeously written. I think there‘s something about grief that we imagine will be heartwrenching and cathartic to read about but is so deep and intimate that it remains slightly aloof all the while. H is for Hawk captures that and the strange and completely individualized ways we deal with the inescapable reality that those we love we will lose someday.

8/10 Nonfiction Biography. Some parts of this book struck a deep chord. When my father passed, it was unexpected and very hard for me. I was able to relate to Helens grief and feeling very odd. Helen found her salvation in Mabel. Goshawks are rather different birds, and I'm interested in learning more about them.

#JulyColdplay #Birds from the stash ,big book more of a browser, Hawk still on #mountainTBR

#thursdaysurvey @laurenslibrary

1) Hmmm, this was technically the end of last year but I LOVED H is for Hawk - it's beautiful
2) I haven't read enough books this year to have a least fave! (Damn you finals revision)
3) The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (loved The Night Circus)
4) I've set myself the goal of reading AS MUCH FOR FUN AS POSSIBLE for the rest of the year now I'm done w finals!!
5) everyone who follows me!! Tag me if you do it!🙌

This book came highly recommended to me, and I think that I may have had my expectations raised a bit too high... still, it‘s a fascinating and genuinely interesting mashup of memoir, goshawk raising and a lot of T. H. White‘s biography. Read by the author, this made for some good distraction while cleaning for Memorial Day company (and some #AudioColoring too!)

#QuotsyMar19 Day 31: the baying of the #hound is true and painful, apparently. Read so many rave reviews of this memoir but not sure whether I can get through some of the more technical aspects of it, which from what I understand is deliberately wrought to signify that sense of solitude and craftsmanship.

I‘d always heard this was about a woman grieving the death of her father and her relationship with a goshawk. I had no idea that T.H. White‘s life would be such a large part of the story. That was particularly fascinating to me. Beautifully written and I loved listening to the author tell her story.

Helen Macdonald‘s memoir covers her grieving process after the death of her father, as well as her relationship with the goshawk she then decided to train. Intertwined with her own story, we learn about the life of T.H. White; his book Goshawk is one that deeply touched Macdonald, from her childhood to those moments of grief. I enjoyed reading H is for Hawk, but it might not be a book I would ever get back to once my class is done.

For some days now, I have been curling up w/this book, as one does with a blanket. Beautifully and intricately written, the elements are interwoven and sometimes come upon you suddenly as life does. I enjoyed the author‘s reading immensely, although she often soothed me to sleep and I had to rewind.
I adore this book.
It is gorgeous but not for folks who are sensitive to animals in captivity or the isolating nature of grief and depression.

Thank you so much! @bookish_wookish You are awesome! A sloth bookmark!! I love sloths 😍💕 I have been wanting a book sleeve for so long, I love it!
#CupidGoesPostal

Thank you for the lovely gifts @julesg - beautiful package! I might bring some of these books to the reading retreat in April. Looking forward to meeting you there! #cupidgoespostal @BookishMarginalia

What a poignant, heartbreak, uplifting, insightful book! In the same vein as Lab Girl this is an interesting melding of memoir & non-fiction. The author is a falconer, but after her father unexpectedly dies she tries to cope w/ the loss by training a goshawk, which are notoriously difficult birds. She also weaves in T.H. White (author of The Once and Future King) & his life as well as his experience training a goshawk in his book The Goshawk.

So many thoughts.

1. 📺 Game of Thrones
2. 📺 Kingdoms, dragons, battles, Queens kings, and.... Did I say dragons? 😆
3. 📚Honestly, I just don't know and I would have to think about this longer than just a few minutes 😉
I hate to leave this blank so I'll add the first one that comes to mind: 11/22/63 Stephen King
4. 📚At this moment, it's H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
5. 📚 Macdonald lived in the woods by amazing goshawks! 🤙
#frideas @Hufflepuff16

This wasn‘t the book for me. I heard this was about grieving and the process that MacDonald went thru leading her to train a Goshawk. Instead I was given a weird mixed in biography of T.H White. It was out of place enough and often enough that it kinda ruined the book and I had to bail.

Struggling a bit to finish up H Is for Hawk. It‘s been wonderful, don‘t get me wrong! But it is very different from my normal non-fiction reads. Very prose-y, almost poetic in format. There‘s a lesson always to be learned about what you like in a book!
#litsynewbie #hisforhawk #bookworm

Books for my two PhD classes:
📖 Studies in Genre, in which we will look at animal tales.
📖 Studies in Modernism, with a focus on modernist poetry.

It‘s a habit you can fall into, willing yourself into invisibility. And it doesn‘t serve you well in life. Believe me it doesn‘t. Not with people and loves and hearts and homes and work.

“The air is dark and full of water. He is soaked to the skin. Gos is nowhere to be seen. He is tying pieces of rabbit to all the places where the hawk had been. They are like prayers, like the tattered ribbons pagans tie to winter twigs.”

This quote sent me down the rabbit hole of clotties and wishing trees, my only experience of which is the common trail marker, neon and ubiquitous when hiking in Canada. Prayers of a sort I guess😆

And with one book I knock off three bingo squares. Helen Macdonald (female author) writes about training a goshawk (animal) as a means of dealing with grief over her father‘s unexpected death. And now I want to watch the PBS Nature special about her training of another goshawk 10 years later! #nonfiction2019 #readingwomenchallenge about nature

1) Winter lights at the Plaza in Santa Fe. Snow and blue skies this time of year!
2) 70 books. Participating in #mounttbr2019 #readharder2019 #booked2019 and some buddyreads.
3) Worst: Lost 2 kitties in 2018, one to heart failure and one after a long battle with IBD. Best: Volunteering with Felines and Friends, a cat rescue organization in Santa Fe.
4) Weekly yoga, continue weight loss
5) H is for Hawk
#humpdaypost @MinDea

“...I am beginning to see that for some people a hawk on the hand of a stranger urges confession, urges confidences, lets you speak words about hope and home and heart. And I realise, too, that in all my days of walking Mabel the only people who have come up and spoken to us have been outsiders: children, teenage goths, homeless people, overseas students, travellers, drunks, people on holiday.

Stimulus: opera. Response: kill.

A baby Goshawk learning to respond to sounds with a taloned kill grip. This line cracked me up! Apparently not a fan of arias. 🤪

Wow...they really do have eerie marigold eyes. Just started this non-fiction book after midnight. First new book of 2019. #anewchapter #newbeginnings

"The Light that filled my house was deep and livid, half magnolia, half rainwater. Things sat in it, dark and still. Sometimes I felt I was living in a house at the bottom of the sea." -H is for Hawk
#bookquotes #currentlyreading #grief

" Looking for goshawks is like looking for grace: it comes, but not often, and you don't get any say when or how. "

🎄prints of quotes
🎄heading to my parents for a few days
🎄met and exceeded
🎄 Love Actually
🎄👍
#friyayintro @howjessreads

A weird mix of memoir, biography, and nature writing that I loved. The prose is gorgeous.

After the sudden death of her father, Helen sinks into a depression. An avid falconer, she decides that training a goshawk is her path out of grief. Her inspiration is a book by T.H. White about his attempt to train a goshawk. She intertwines her own experience with White‘s as she navigates her relationship with Mabel and finds a way through grief.

I unexpectedly enjoyed this. Part love letter to the author‘s late father, part description of how to train a hawk, part analysis of historical hawking literature; overall it was compelling. The historical parts were less so and I became tired of the constant references to TH White. But I cried at the author‘s, all too familiar, grief, and fell in love with Mabel the goshawk. And that cover - one of my favourites this year I think.

Woman gets a hawk to train to help her deal with the loss of her father. I really enjoyed in the first few chapters, but then it just got...tiring. I've found myself skimming through pages and all the interest I had in the beginning was totally lost. I hate bailing on books, but it just wasn't working for me. 😞📚📓📚 #nonfiction

Starting this one, really not sure about it, would love to hear if you‘ve enjoyed it 🦅

Thanks so much for the cute card and the bookmark @Oryx ! The bookmark is lovely - it feels like suede or velvet! (For other Littens it‘s made of real cork, but as thin as a piece of paper - very strokeable!) ❤️

#jbuk

Disclaimer: I listened to the audiobook. I am ignorant to all but the movie speculation when it comes to falconry, or in this case, Hawk-ery. I am not sure if this book is entirely factual, or if some fiction works into it, but it was an interesting and entertaining listen.