H is for Hawk in Around the World in 80 Books

Aug 01, 2020 Wes F rated it liked it · review of another edition

I'd heard about this book for years, but didn't really think about reading it. Found it was available as an audiobook at the library--and so took the plunge. Very interesting--one sure learns a lot about raising & training hawks & falcons in it! Fascinating birds. And I never would have understood all that goes into their training otherwise. The author combines her love of birds--and a hawk named Mabel whom she trains up from scratch--with the sudden loss of her father and the pain/grief she dea ...more

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Nov 25, 2020 Gabriella rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Hard to write a short review of this book. I'll say that what I got out of it MOST was not the reflections on Helen Macdonald's dead father, which were sometimes poignant, and not the musings on the strange, unconventional author of "The Once and Future King" T.H. White, though I loved them, but the amazing descriptions of the author training her hawk, Mabel, in the Cambridgeshire countryside. She can contemplate Mabel tearing into a partridge or rabbit, and it's gripping. She runs underneath th ...more

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Dec 25, 2018 T.ScottReviews rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2018, f-n-non-fic, audible-returns, format-audio, eoy-disappointments, authors-minority, authors-non-binary, rating-2-half-stars, age-adult, 301-350-pages

2.5 Stars

Disappointing Read 2018

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Jan 19, 2016 Lara rated it liked it

I really enjoyed the first half of this book and then felt like I had learned as much as I wanted to about falconry and T.H. White who may really be the subject of this book. I kept expecting the book to expand its themes beyond the day-to-day (or minute-to-minute as it sometimes felt) of hawk life but it's really mostly about a woman and her bird. ...more

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