"The Hawk Was A Fire That Burned My Hurts Away. There Could Be No Regret Or Mourning In Her. No Past Or Future. She Lived In The Present Only, And That Was My Refuge"

There might be a bit of amused coincidence in finishing a book about a bird of prey the day after we as Americans celebrate a day of thankfulness and gratitude by eating turkey. Here is where I would make a smart comment about the fact that if Ben Franklin had chosen the turkey as the American symbol, maybe we would be eating bald eagle on Thanksgiving instead; however, that little ditty is actually a myth (although Franklin did seem to be opposed to it being an eagle).

Any-who, I did finish H is for Hawk. And as I previously mentioned, I really had no idea what the book was about when I impulsively put it into my Amazon shopping cart. And I'm generally not a fan of non-fiction autobiography-type books and I didn't really know that's what I had signed up for. And after recently reading When Breath Becomes Air, I think I'm good with books about facing the reality of death and facing our own mortality.

The book is a self-recounting of Helen Macdonald's time after the death of her father spent training a goshawk. Prior to reading this book, I knew absolutely zero about falconry and training hawks/birds of prey. And honestly, that was definitely what I found most interesting about the book. The idea of being able to train a completely wild, non-domesticated breed of animal is quite fascinating. And the history behind how this was an aristocratic activity (and how hunting in general in England was reserved for the elite and royalty due to owning of the expanses of land where the hunts were conducted) was also so interesting to me. Macdonald details all of the steps of this process in lovely detail, so even though I had no concept of what would be involved, equipment names, etc, her explanations and descriptions provided a very comprehensive understanding of everything involved. It's the science nerd in me. What can I say?

And while I can appreciate her parallels between training the hawk and her grief process following her father's sudden death (and certainly there were many parts of the book that felt like I was reading the cathartic journaling of someone dealing with the death of a loved one), there were times when it felt a bit forced. I have no doubt that Macdonald's choice to obtain and train a hawk at that time in her life were very much entwined with her desire to self-isolate and to retreat into the wildness of a goshawk, but the abundance of "training hawk as dealing with grief" parallels in every chapter just seemed like a little much to me after a while.

In parallel with her own story of training her goshawk, Macdonald tells of many of the writings that inspired her interest in hawking, in particular the book The Goshawk by T.H. White, who was the author of The Sword in the Stone. And the portrait of White was quite fascinating. I knew absolutely nothing about him, and realized that I actually don't really know anything about The Sword in the Stone either. I'm really only familiar with the Disney-fied version and even then, I've only seen bits and pieces. But to read of White's life, struggle to connect with other people, and closeted sexuality in relation to his own training of a goshawk I think brought a strength to Macdonald's own story. I had hoped for a more compelling end to the book related to the parallels of Macdonald's time spent training her hawk and White's, but not to be.

I did enjoy the book and again, the details of training a hawk were fascinating. But not sure if I would have read it had I known more about the book ahead of time. So yeah. Moving on.

Next up, I'm taking a strange sojourn to hit one of the pieces listed under the "Philosophy" section of my List of Best Literary Works: Meditations by Rene Descartes. It is fairly short in length so I hope to make fast work of it over the holiday weekend, however, I fully expect lots of mental gymnastics along the way. I took an intro to philosophy class as a freshman undergraduate at the University of Michigan, and it was one of those classes that really blew open my entire way of thinking about the world, and now, nearly 20 years later, I can point to as a moment when my way of looking at the world changed. So I'm expecting to see a revisit of many of the topics that were discussed in that class, which I'm looking forward to.

Happy thanksgiving!

"Some Say That We Shall Never Know And That To The Gods We Are Like The Flies That The Boys Kill On A Summer Day, And Some Say, On The Contrary, That The Very Sparrows Do Not Lose A Feather That Has Not Been Brushed Away By The Finger Of God"

The Bridge of San Luis Rey is based around a very simple concept (with a similar quote noted in the book): do we live and die by accident, or do we live and die by plan? In the Afterword of the book, there are excerpts of letters and lectures by Thornton Wilder and he indicates his belief that there are really only a few really great subjects to write about. Which is a very interesting concept...are there really only a handful of basic moral dilemmas people encounter and all books are written around these themes, with different backdrops, characters, and dynamics between the characters?

So Thornton Wilder takes this simple concept, and sets it in Peru where a monk happens to see a osier bridge over a ravine break and 5 people plummet to their deaths. He feels that this circumstance provides him with the perfect opportunity to conduct a "scientific" study of every minutiae of these individuals' lives and determine that there was a reason that God chose them to die. So, yes, he seems to already have his conclusion determined before he begins his examination that these individuals were somehow morally reprehensible and that they deserved what happened to them (it's amusing to me that they referred to it as a "scientific" study when he already knew what he wanted the results to be).

The majority of the rest of the book is then a sketch of each of the 5 characters: the Marquesa de Montemayor, a self-isolated woman who is estranged from her daughter but obsessively craves her daughters love and approval; the Marquesa's young maid/assistant Pepita; Esteban, an identical twin who was emotionally distraught over the recent death of his twin brother; Uncle Pio, an older enigmatic traveler who had devoted most of his life to the instruction, support, and occasional emotional manipulation of Peru's most famous actress; and Jaime, the son of the famous actress.

I cannot begin to say how gorgeously written this book is. I was reading it on an airplane next to my bf, and a few times I had to lean over to him to show him a particular sentence and how exquisite the wording and descriptions were. Again, it was such a simple concept, but the portraits of the characters were just so rich and interesting. And it was written from the perspective of someone who was reviewing their lives, so it was a bit removed but the narrator still knew things about the characters' inner minds that wouldn't likely have been something that could have been researched after their deaths. And in the end, did the monk achieve the foregone conclusion that he set out to confirm? Well, I'll let you find that out for yourselves!

I did love this book very much and I'm looking forward to reading Our Town, also by Thornton Wilder (I've never seen the play or movie). In the meantime, I'm taking a break from the lists to read H is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald, an impulse Amazon purchase. I didn't really have much of an idea what the book was about, but so far, it's interesting. I don't usually buy nonfiction books, and honestly didn't realize it was until I started reading. It won lots of awards and was on lots of "Best Of" lists, so hopefully it will be good!

229 books to go! Happy 5th of November!