Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
Why Peacocks?
Why Peacocks?: An Unlikely Search for Meaning in the World's Most Magnificent Bird | Sean Flynn
3 posts | 2 read | 3 to read
An acclaimed journalist seeks to understand the mysterious allure of peacocksand in the process discovers unexpected and valuable life lessons. When Sean Flynns neighbor in North Carolina texted Any chance you guys want a peacock? No kidding! he stared bewilderedly at his phone. He had never considered whether he wanted a peacock. But as an award-winning magazine writer, this kind of mystery intrigued him. So he, his wife, and their two young sons became the owners of not one but three charming yet fickle birds: Carl, Ethel, and Mr. Pickle. In Why Peacocks?, Flynn chronicles his hilarious and heartwarming first year as a peacock owner, from struggling to build a pen to assisting the local bird doctor in surgery to triumphantly watching a peahen lay her first egg. He also examines the history of peacocks, from their appearance in the Garden of Eden to their befuddling Charles Darwin to their bewitching the likes of Flannery OConnor and Martha Stewart. And fueled by a reporters curiosity, he travels across the globe to learn more about the birds firsthand, with stops including a Scottish castle where peacocks have resided for centuries, a southern California community tormented by a serial killer of peacocks, and a Kansas City airport hotel hosting an annual gathering of true peafowl aficionados. At turns comically absurd and deeply poignant, Why Peacocks? blends lively, insightful memoir and illuminating science journalism to answer the titles question. More than that, it offers surprising lessons about love, grief, fatherhood, and family.
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
Pick icon
100%
blurb
TheKidUpstairs
post image

#OnThisDay in 1914, seven poets gathered to eat a peacock. WB Yeats, Ezra Pound, Victor Plarr, Thomas Sturge Moore, Richard Aldington, and Frank Flint gathered to honour Wilfrid Scawen Blunt by eating a peacock. I honestly don't know why this is interesting, and yet I'm intrigued! #HistoryGetsLIT

wanderinglynn That‘s interesting! And now I have many questions. Like does peacock tastes like chicken? 🦚▶️🐓 And why a peacock? 3y
Kappadeemom @wanderinglynn prolly cause they are aggravating as hell! We live near peacocks and they SCREAM like women getting murdered 😂 (edited) 3y
wanderinglynn @Kappadeemom 😆 yes, that would be a good reason! 3y
TheKidUpstairs @Kappadeemom yes! They're screech is terrifying. The first time I heard it I thought "someone save that small child!" 3y
TheKidUpstairs @wanderinglynn I find it intriguing that we know about this dinner party happening, but so little about the why. Was eating peacock just a thing people did? Apparently the hostess (who owned the property and the peacock, and arranged the whole party, but wasn't actually invited to partake) was mad that they didn't get a picture with the whole group and the peacock before it was slaughtered and prepped. 3y
56 likes5 comments
review
BookishMarginalia
post image
Pickpick

I enjoyed this book, which is part memoir of owning pet peacocks and part idiosyncratic history of peacocks in history and culture. Beware though, of graphic descriptions of peacock killings as well as rather upsetting pet deaths... not for the faint of heart! (The author —an investigative reporter specializing in the aftermath of violence—seems to relish a little too much the minutia of the illness and death of pets and attacks on animals.)

86 likes1 stack add
review
akaGingerK
post image
Bailedbailed

Entertaining narrative voice, and the author put in some fun research to take “having peacocks” to “knowing enough about peacocks in history/culture to justify writing a book.” But before the halfway point I‘d hit two animal deaths, and from skimming ahead discovered a later chapter is entirely about the end of a pet‘s life. Not the right book for me! #ARC