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#CoverLove

Late to post today as I was in Hilo & waiting for my flight home to take off. For today‘s #TanBeige prompt, how about a book by Amy #Tan with a #Beige cover?! 😉

I saw&heard Amy Tan talk about her new book The Backyard Bird Chronicles. I didn‘t know she learned how to draw and paint animals only a few years ago!I‘m not sure why but I was a bit disappointed. She was witty&the audience loved her. But I had the feeling the jokes were a bit rehearsed &she probably says the same thing to every audience on her book tour?Then again I guess that‘s normal? Anyway, not worth over 40$ in a shitty seat.

I‘m not a birder, and I only picked it up as it‘s Amy Tan. It‘s glorious. Not too science-y, yet informative, and with Tan‘s ability to create stories, each journal entry about her observations becomes stories with characters and personalities. Who knew Tan is an exceptional artist? This has humor, beauty, and Tan‘s writing. Perfect.

My kids say my thorough enjoyment of this book means I‘m officially old. Pictured: the owl that used to hang out in our yard.

“With both fiction and birds, I think about existence, the span of life, from conception to birth to survival to death to remembrance by others. I reflect on mortality, the strangeness of it, the inevitability. I do that daily, and not with dread, but with awareness that life contains ephemeral moments, which can be saved in words and images, there for pondering, for reviving the bird and my hear…”⬇️

Turns out that not only is Amy Tan a great writer, she‘s also a terrific artist. She recently rediscovered her joy in drawing when she was drawn in by watching the birds in her yard. In this book, she chronicles 6 years of bird watching and feeding with her own illustrations, whether formal portraits or alongside less formal jottings. This book is a complete delight (and I‘m not necessarily very interested in birds).