Book Group for February: Vesper Flights

Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald will be our book for discussion on  February 16 at 1:00 pm.. Zoom link: http://bit.ly/AAUWBennProgram

Vesper Flights, Macdonald’s second book has received high praise. Below are the comments on the Grove Atlantic Press site: 

Helen Macdonald’s bestselling debut H is for Hawk brought the astonishing story of her relationship with goshawk Mabel to global critical acclaim and announced Macdonald as one of this century’s most important and insightful nature writers. H is for Hawk won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction and the Costa Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, launching poet and falconer Macdonald as our preeminent nature essayist, with a semi-regular column in the New York Times Magazine.

In Vesper Flights, Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep.

Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing massive migrations of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk’s poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds’ nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife.

By one of this century’s most important and insightful nature writers, Vesper Flights is a captivating and foundational book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make sense of the world around us.

We will be meeting on Zoom until further notice. Here is the schedule for the next few months.

March–-Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

April–-State of Terror: a novel by Hillary Clinton and Louisa Penny

If you have suggestions for books in subsequent months, please let us know.  Send an email to Book Club co-chair, Mary Feidner (mfeidner@comcast.net).