From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
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As a practising mortician, Caitlin Doughty has long been fascinated by our pervasive terror of dead...
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Women in Tech: Take Your Career to the Next Level with Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories
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Geared toward women who are considering getting into tech, or those already in a tech job who want...
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Art Forms in Nature
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The geometric shapes and natural forms, captured with exceptional precision in Ernst Haeckel's...
Collected Poems
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This edition of the collected poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar includes 60 poems not included in the...
African Metropolitan Architecture
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A celebration of the life and legacy of one of the most important food writers of all time – the...
Fingerprint: The Art of Using Hand-Made Elements in Graphic Design
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Make Your Mark Design is at a turning point. Our infatuation with—and the backlash...
An Ideal Husband
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Although Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) created a wide range of poetry, essays, and fairy tales (and one...
Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2273 KP) rated Kinsey and Me: Stories in Books
Jul 9, 2023
The back section featuring thirteen vignettes as author Sue Grafton reflects on her life growing up with a functioning alcoholic father and a destructive alcoholic mother. While she admits they are autobiographical, she frames them around a character named Kit.
Fans of Kinsey will delight in these nine stories, all previous published, but decades ago so hard to track down outside this collection now. Personally, I found the back section depressing, but I suspect these stories were theopoetic for Ms. Grafton to write, and I can see others benefiting from them, too.
Overall, fans of the series will enjoy the collection. If you are new to the series, you can jump in here, too, and meet Kinsey without ruining any of fun of the novels.
Janeeny (200 KP) rated Vesper Flights in Books
Sep 7, 2021
Vesper Flights is Helen Macdonald’s latest book chronicling her relationship with nature. This is slightly different from her previous books in the respect it’s not a linear narrative but a collection of essays that also explores “The human relationship with nature”.
We are given more of an insight into Macdonald’s upbringing as she regales us with anecdotes of emotional journeys to her childhood home and dark episodes on a falcon breeding farm in Wales. Her passion for nature and the natural world comes across strongly, without sermonising. In one chapter she mentions Fox hunting and how she’s morally opposed to it, without admonishing those that do partake in it. A common thread throughout the essays is how we can be so involved with the conservation of nature yet still be so detached from it. Admittedly it’s something that I’ve never even thought about before, so I’ll be paying more attention to the way I interact with the world around me from now on.
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One thing that seems to draw me in with Mcdonald’s writing is that there always seems to be an underlying sadness in the way she writes. Even when she’s partaking in a stunning bird-watching event, she never quite gives herself over to the joy and excitement of that moment. At one point after reading how she once covered herself in mud and twigs and stalked a herd of cows I just wanted to put my arms around her and ask if she’s ok. (Oddly enough in the same chapter there is a very dark incident with a dying Ostrich, but it was the incident with the cows that worried me most)
I’d be interested to read something Macdonald wrote before her father passed away. It is obvious that the death of her father did have a profound effect on her, and it would be curious to see if that is also what has influenced this mournful quality in her writing.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a critique in any way I like the way she can convey the melancholy of a murmuration. As a perpetually positive person, I do need to be prodded with the emotion stick every now and again.
There is a line in one of the essays “I shouldn’t do it also because pulling at your heart on purpose is a compulsion as particular and disconcerting as pressing on a healing bruise” so maybe she gets some cathartic pleasure from heartache. I’m envious; I lost both my parents within a few years of each other and I find it very hard to engage in any strong emotions regarding this. I miss them, but I think my innate ability to detach myself from unpleasant situations has worked a little too well here and I can’t articulate exactly how that makes me feel.
Woah, so that was a major digression, let’s put that brick back and summarise the review, shall we?
After reading Vesper Flights, even if you don’t like the whole book, I defy you not to have a favourite chapter. It’s close but I think I liked ‘Goats’ the best, as not only is it a funny story, but you can practically hear the little smile as Macdonald reminisces about her dad