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    Birds Art Life Death: A Field Guide to the Small and Significant
    Unavailable
    Birds Art Life Death: A Field Guide to the Small and Significant
    Unavailable
    Birds Art Life Death: A Field Guide to the Small and Significant
    Audiobook4 hours

    Birds Art Life Death: A Field Guide to the Small and Significant

    Written by Kyo Maclear

    Narrated by Laurel Lefkow

    4/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    ‘Now when I hear birdsong, I feel an entry to that understory. When I am feeling too squeezed on the ground, exhausted by everything in my care, I look for a little sky. There are always birds flying back and forth, city birds flitting around our human edges, singing their songs.’

    One winter, Kyo Maclear became unmoored. Her father had recently fallen ill and she suddenly found herself lost for words. As a writer, she could no longer bring herself to create; her work wasn’t providing the comfort and meaning that it had before.

    But then Kyo met a musician who loved birds. The musician felt he could not always cope with the pressures and disappointments of being an artist in a big city. When he watched birds and began to photograph them, his worries dissipated. Intrigued, Kyo found herself following the musician for a year, accompanying him on his birdwatching expeditions; the sounds of birds in the city reminded them both to look outwards at the world.

    Intricate and delicate as birdsong, Birds Art Life Death asks how our passions shape and nurture us, and how we might gain perspective, overcome our anxieties and begin to cherish the urban wild spaces where so many of us live.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateFeb 9, 2017
    ISBN9780008210021
    Unavailable
    Birds Art Life Death: A Field Guide to the Small and Significant
    Author

    Kyo Maclear

    Kyo Maclear was born in London, England, and moved to Toronto at the age of four. Her most recent book, Birds Art Life, was published in seven territories and became a Canadian #1 bestseller. Unearthing was an instant bestseller in Canada as well. Kyo received a PhD from York University in the environmental humanities. Her short fiction, essays, and art criticism have been published in Orion Magazine, Asia Art Pacific, LitHub, Brick, The Millions, The Guardian, Lion’s Roar, The Globe and Mail (Toronto), among other publications. She is also a children’s author, editor, and teacher.

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    Reviews for Birds Art Life Death

    4/5

    14 ratings7 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This deceptively gentle book began as a sort of memoir by the author when her father becomes ill and she searches for a way to deal with this. She befriends a musician who also happens to photograph birds and follows him for a year. In the process, she learns not only about birds, but about herself, and her family. A lot of insight and wisdom is packed into this lovely little volume. There is a short passage from Maclear as she contemplates her sons' independence and freedom to be kids:- "We had been coming to our tiny cabin for ten years, trading modern conveniences for cool, sweet lake water. Any issues I had with communal dining, theme nights, bonfire singalongs (camp is an introvert's nightmare) were offset by the joy of watching my sons wander independently on the land. Most days, they left in the morning and returned - grubby, scuffed, and sometimes bleeding - after nightfall.It was this self-reliance and freedom, so familiar to my own childhood, that I hoped to kindle. By the time I was nine, I roved freely around the neighbourhood until dark. My mother, busy minding her Japanese art gallery, left the leash long.Thirty years later, in the same city, my children rarely strayed from our home or garden. As a parent who sat somewhere in the middle of the helicopter-laissez-faire spectrum, I wondered what it meant for their independence to be so severely compromised. I wondered and yet I found it hard to let them go. Other parents probably wondered too. Maybe we were just worried about the cold opinion of our peers if we didn't cosset our children enough. All I know is the neighbourhood was full of incarcerated children. Having entered one of the most profoundly chaperoned moments in history, I wanted my sons to experience the kind of unstructured play that builds courage and curiosity. So late summer had become a time of jailbreak."
    • 4/5
      This book is one of those books that could also have had a good life as a blog. There are frequent references to YouTube videos or online personas that I wanted to look up immediately upon reading about. Regardless, this is a short and but impactful book that left me with quite a bit to think about. In this book, Maclear uses birding over the course of a year as a way to deal with the emotions surrounding her aging father. Her narrative style is interesting and often reads more like a journal or notebook with her private thoughts being publicly broadcast. However, this means the book can be frustrating at times because it often seems like there is more to both storylines but the author is holding back both in terms of fully discussing these topics.Its also one of the best books I have read about a normal person processing the effects of climate change. I feel like most of the books on climate change are either a purely scientific book or some sort of futuristic dystopia. This is neither and its incredibly refreshing to read about a very personal response to mankind's impact on both bird populations and the Earth at large.
    • 5/5
      When Maclear found herself "unmoored" and unable to concentrate on writing, she joined a musician who had treated his artistic doldrums by birdwatching and photographing birds in Toronto. She accompanied the unnamed musician on his bird walks for one year, writing about her experience and thoughts in chapters arranged by the month, each having a motif. At one point she speaks of "spark birds", the first time I've heard this phrase that refers to the bird that sparked personal interest. I was happy to find Audubon's spark bird was the same as mine, a phoebe. My phoebe came back year after year to build a nest on the same spot on the wall beside the door of our weekend house in a remote area of northern Alberta. Maclear goes on to consider "spark books", another intriguing topic that naturally had me thinking of what book had sparked my interest in reading. Maclear's memoir is profound without being scholarly, gentle, but never bland. There are many moments of quiet brilliance that demanded to be recorded in my own journal. Although birds feature large, this is not a book about birds, but about life. It is an absolute jewel.I discovered Kyo Maclear through The Fog, an Early Reviewer win that led me to The Specific Ocean, another of her excellent children's books.
    • 3/5
      A book about the author's discovery of a new world of birds and the aging of her dad. Both ideas are not fully expressed leaving the reader wanting more. Some good bon mots, but I found most of them facile, lacking in depth, something one might find on a Starbucks cup. It's worth the trip because the book is short. It didn't change life with any out-of the-world insight.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book! I had not heard of Kyo Maclear before but when she mentioned her war correspondent father I realized I was quite familiar with him. Kyo doesn't go running off to the world's troubled spots but she brings the same introspection and acuity to her writing that Michael Maclear did to his reportage.Kyo didn't know much about birds when she started out. She was feeling anxious and adrift as a result of her father's health problems. She realized she wanted a journey and a guide for that journey but since she was an urbanite with family responsibilities her journey was going to have to be close to home. She learned of a local musician who was also a birder and gifted photographer who had found peace by birding in the city. She contacted him and asked him to guide her for a year to learn about birds. Along the way she thought about art and life. Each chapter is devoted to one month, the birds she saw that month and the thoughts she had about art and life. Each chapter is a gem!In September Kyo and her guide saw a baby goldfinch on the ground unable to fly. Kyo wanted to help it somehow but was convince by the musician to leave it alone. Later Kyo regretted listening to him and wrote this about regret:What do you regret? I regret the times I have acted with too much head or, conversely, with too much hear. I regret the times it seemed better, somehow, to hang back and not step forward. I regret, along with writer George Saunders, the tepid and timid response, the moments when another "being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded...sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly." I regret the instances I have turned to others for guidance even when I already had a hunch of what to do. I regret the part of me that is deferential, that fears being sentimental. I regret I am not more propelled by impulse, nerve, instinct. I regret I am not better able to hide my natural sincerity under a slant and sucy wit. I regret I am not captained by science.Except for that last sentence those thoughts echo ones I have always had. How wonderful that someone else has felt the same things and put them into words!
    • 4/5
      A book that found me at the perfect moment. I was feeling stressed with all the things that needed to be done before Christmas, anxiety ridden because time was running out. I started reading this book at night, a month at a time, loved how this bookman divided by months, and since the author was also having a problem with anxiety, her struggles helped me with my own. Of course hers were forma different and more important reason than mine were, her father's failing health, feeling closed in and worried about losing her creativity. Married, with two young boys, she, with the help of a bird loving musician friend, takes to walking and noticing the birds in her vicinity. I loved that she looked form and learned about the common birds in her area, studying books, and learning patience in her struggle. I loved the month where she discusses the importance of little things, how sometimes they are overlooked for bigger things, bigger gestures. She goes on to lost small books that had big messages, made a big impact. Reminded me that taking things a little at a time was less overwhelming. Another month discusses authors who had an outside hobby and how they seemed more content, well rounded. Many other insightful discussions, a great resource for writers and non writers alike. Enjoyed this very much.
    • 4/5
      I liked this book. I found it thought-provoking and meditative. I feel a connection (or would like to feel) with North-East part of America and this book helped consolidate that feeling. I'd like to visit there and see and feel the things she describes, first hand.