Welcome to Litsy!

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 🙂🐕

Beautifully written but brutal.

This is a story about grief, coping with loss and finding a reason to go on. It is also a book about TH White and his novel The Goshawk where his ineptitude with nature is revealed and where as usual humans are more brutal than natures killers. Then again it is a book about building a relationship with nature and understanding the darkness and brutal that inhabit the hunt.

Falconry is not for the faint hearted.

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

#aty24 #bookthatisntanovel

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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

This was beautiful & sad, with an undercurrent of violence that comes with the territory of "taming" a wild animal. I found it moving in a lot of aspects, & appreciated the biographical aspects of White's life as integral to Macdonald's attempt to work things out within herself. The saddest thing was contemplating these hawks & falcons; do humans have to mess with nature in order to heal themselves? All throughout I just wanted Mabel to be free.

I thought of the tagged book so many times during our 2-hour falconry experience yesterday. This local place has special certifications that allow them to offer interactive presentations to the public in a safe and legal way. I still kind of want to get into falconry, which I imagine would be rewarding, humbling, and very messy, but maybe I can just get my next job with a falconer. (This is me with a Harris's hawk.)

Kind of lovely when book serendipity happens. Randomly picked H is for Hawk for the #TBRtarot this month, but as I see now it will feature T.H. White quite heavily because he wrote The Goshawk. It's something I didn't consciously register when I picked this up. Super illuminating to read this though, after reading The Once and Future King for the first time with the #OAFKingalong group!

Decided on my May pick for #TBRtarot and am very much looking forward to it! @CBee

Guys, this section is LONG!!! I am suggesting we postpone our check-in until next Friday and go by the revised schedule below. Lancelot is one cranky dude and I still have a long way to go. 🤣 #OAFkingalong

April 28: The Ill-Made Knight - Favorite (or least fav) character so far.
May 5: The Candle in the Wind - Pick/So-So/Pan/Bail review