A great selection of essays on a wide variety of nature or nature adjacent topics. I love her writing as she usually presents the animals she encounters as they are, without putting her own expectations on them and they never fail to interest and delight. Especially enjoyed her analysis of her own attitude towards deer, which I think many people share ( )

Love love love, I want to be your friend. ( )

These short pieces are perfectly sized for maximum enjoyment and impact. While most deal with nature and our ways of encountering the natural world, some focus on our ways of encountering one another. I will be picking up some of Macdonald's other works. ( )

https://www.instagram.com/p/CyBUFarrvoZ/

Helen Macdonald - Vesper Flights: This one had more whinging about days of yore. #cursorybookreviews #cursoryreviews ( )

This is a collection of essays. Naturally, any collection is going to have some that are better than others, some that speak to a reader more than others, but this collection is remarkably consistent and coherent.

Many of the essays are biographical, so Macdonald talks a lot about her strange but often delightful childhood and her growing love of nature, as well as her career as a naturalist and writer.

One of the major themes found throughout the book is the relationship between humans and nature, with a particular focus on what the relationship between humans and animals says about human identity, particularly national identity. She is British, and wrote a lot of these essays during and after Brexit, so there are several essays about the role birds play in British nationalism. There are also a lot of more personal essays about the role animals have played in her life and her understanding of her own identity and place in the world.

"Animals don’t exist in order to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves." ( )