These are beautifully written lyrical essays. My only complaint is the formatting - there's no separation between essays which makes it a bit of a chore to read. Worth the effort though.

Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald is a very highly recommended collection of 41 essays and meditations on the natural world. This is 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.

As she writes: I hope that this book works a little like a Wunderkammer. It is full of strange things and it is concerned with the quality of wonder. and... Most of all I hope my work is about a thing that seems to me of the deepest possible importance in our present-day historical moment: finding ways to recognise and love difference. The attempt to see through eyes that are not your own. To understand that your way of looking at the world is not the only one. To think what it might mean to love those that are not like you. To rejoice in the complexity of things.

Vesper Flights fulfills her hope admirably. The essays are written in a poetic manner with an insight, clarity, and descriptiveness that immediately pulls you into seeing the natural world through her eyes and perhaps alter the way you currently look at the natural world. Humans tend to anthropomorphize the natural world rather than trying to viewing it realistically. Macdonald's descriptions and insight help assist in creating a true picture of the subject while providing insight into both the animal and human world. The writing is wonderful and the tone she sets helped bring a peaceful calm feeling to the forefront during a stressful time.

Contents include: An Introduction; Nest; Nothing Like a Pig; Inspector Calls ; Field Guides; Tekels Park; High-Rise; The Human Flock; The Student’s Tale; Ants; Symptomatic; Sex, Death, Mushrooms; Winter Woods; Eclipse; In Her Orbit; Hares; Lost, But Catching Up; Swan Upping; Nestboxes; Deer in the Headlights; The Falcon and the Tower; Vesper Flights; In Spight of Prisons; Sun Birds and Cashmere Spheres; The Observatory; Wicken; Storm; Murmurations; A Cuckoo in the House; The Arrow-Stork; Ashes; A Handful of Corn; Berries; Cherry Stones; Birds, Tabled; Hiding; Eulogy; Rescue; Goats; Dispatches from the Valleys; The Numinous Ordinary; What Animals Taught Me; Acknowledgements.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Grove/Atlantic.
After publication the review will be posted on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Ms. Macdonald's writing captures the beauty of our world. During these difficult times, it was nice to escape into the natural world and experience nature through her writing. This book is a collection of essays, that at first didn't make sense but then I caught on and enjoyed each of them. The observations remind us that there is more in the world than just humans. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

Thank you to the author, Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This collection of essays is beautifully written, and - like "H is for Hawk" - deeply personal, but with a wider focus on the natural world. The author's thoughts on the observation of nature, the environmental impact of our modern world, and the way she enlarges small pieces of knowledge to show how much there is behind what is immediately apparent woke my sense of wonder, again and again.

Macdonald writes with beautiful prose, comparing life's moments with the wonders of nature. I loved exploring the woods to find mushrooms with her, and learning how migratory birds can be spotted at the top of Empire State Building. But it was nearly impossible to read the book comfortably because of the formatting. The e-galley has no breaks in the pages or labels to indicate the transition to a new essay. In fact, I had to look up the book to realize that it was supposed to be parsed apart into essays. Without the breaks, the book reads like a stream of consciousness. There was no pattern that I could really find in order to decide when one essay ended and another started. It even seemed that sometimes a new essay started in the middle of the paragraph. It made for some torturous reading. I understand that it's more so the content than the formatting when it comes to these previews, but this truly detracted from enjoying the book.

A collection of essays reflecting the author’s connection to nature and the human experience. Macdonald writes beautifully and the reader is transported by her words. The topics are varied: eclipse, meadows, bird migration, migraines, mushrooms, and more. Her essay on the eclipse resurrected my faded memories from the one I experienced in 2017. How delightful to relive such a wondrous moment.

To me, this is a “dip in” book, one in which the reader most benefits by reading an essay and then setting the book aside to process each experience. This is a book to savor.

In the eARC, the format was awful. Just a string of essays with no breaks or functional table of contents, so it took a couple of essays to figure out what was going on. I am sure this will be fixed in publication, but Grove Press, please put a little more effort into the eARC. I say this with the greatest respect and appreciation for the content.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Press for the eARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

An enjoyable read from a well-respected naturalist, Ms. Macdonald’s observations are acutely descriptive and thought-provoking. Her notes on migraines were jaw dropping.
This advanced copy had not been edited with a chapter framework which made the reading a rambling event and I found myself longing for a plot (H is for Hawk) to arrange my understanding of the subject matter. Fans of author Robert Macfarlane will love this one!

Helen Macdonald is that rare muse illuminating our lives amongst and relationships with nature. After her stunning H Is for Hawk, "Vesper Flights" collects forty eclectic essays, some short, some extended. All are stunningly wonderfully written. The range of topics reveals a questing mind. As a late-to-the-party birder, I adored "Field guides," exploring their pleasures and how they have changed over the decades. She observes boars, ascends the Empire State Building to watch night-time migrations, follows a Mars-obsessed astrobiologist, muses about the pleasures and idiosyncrasies of bird hides. The title piece is magical, an investigation into why swifts ascend incredibly high twice a day, with amazing discoveries unveiled. I discover that "birdwatcher" is old-time British intelligence slang for "spy." In the final lengthy essay, Macdonald reflects deeply on "What animals taught me," dissecting why "none of us sees animals clearly," and offering a nuanced conclusion. Turning over the final page of Vesper Flights, I found myself almost overcome with emotions and fresh insights. Brilliant.

Having loved Helen Macdonald's memoir H is for Hawk, I was thrilled to receive early access to Vesper Flights. This collection of essays centered on the natural world is beautiful - and at times, heartbreaking - to read. Macdonald's poetic abilities are on display once again, and I read many passages over again to absorb the lyrical style and deeper meaning. What a wonder to learn about the life of birds high above us, unseen worlds in the sky. Though readers may find that this book feels a bit less personal than the author's memoir, it is still a stunning observation of nature, environmental impact, and being wholly present to observe the world around us. Thanks to the publisher for this ARC copy!

Vesper Flights is a moving and reflective collection of essays written in a candid and lyrical style.

A stunning collection of essays from the author of H is for Hawk. These essays are, like H is for Hawk, deeply personal, but also possess a wider view on the natural world and our connection, or lack of, to it.
From recollections of her childhood as she discovered the richness and abundance of insect and bird life in a nearby meadow to her dawning awareness of its terrible fragility; to life and mortality and our awful destructiveness to the world we live in.
Her sensitivity to the the numinous moments we experience in nature is also wonderfully conveyed; this book is glorious and passionate and terrifying...an urgent call to arms.

I heard so much about Helen Macdonald's book H is for Hawk that I picked it up but had not had time to read it because of all my egalley reviewing. When I saw her book Vesper Flights I requested it--I would finally have to read Macdonald!

The essays in Vesper Flights include a broad range of subjects including climate change, species extinction, migraine headaches, bird migration, and solar eclipses. The wonder of the natural world is beautifully experienced through Macdonald's words.

When Macdonald talks about viewing the migration of birds from the top of the Empire State Building, I remembered one of the most extraordinary sights of my life. My husband and I were at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania when we saw the sky darkened with migrating birds, an endless stream that filled the sky! To this day, forty years later, I remember the dark silhouettes winging against a sky filled with streaks of dark clouds backlit by an autumn sun.

A chapter that caught my attention describes her trek with Nathalie Cabrol, an explorer, astrobiologist and planetary geologist specializing in Mars. They went to the high altitudes of Antofagasta, Chile, to an environment that may be like that of Mars. "They higher we climbed, the further we'd go back in time--not on Earth, but on Mars," Macdonald writes.

I love armchair travel that takes me to such extraordinary places. Cabrol takes the author to the desert salt flats and gypsum sands, a brutal environment with its dangerously high UV radiation, thin atmosphere, and volcanic activity.

"Above me, the Southern Hemisphere stars are all dust and terror and distance and slow fire in the night, and I stare up, frozen, and frozen in wonderment," MacDonald recalls.

Cabrol says the Earth will survive us after we have destroyed what has made our existence possible. It offers little comfort to humans. But we ourselves have created this legacy.

I have savored the book a little at a time, delving in when I need a break from the sad news of the world.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

"The switch in recognition is eerie: I go from seeing rushing patterns in the sky to the realisation that they are made of thousands of beating hearts and eyes and fragile frames of feather and bone. I watch the cranes scratching their beaks with their toes and think of how the startling flocks that pour into reed beds like grain turn all of a sudden into birds perching on bowed stems, bright-eyed, their feathers spangled with white spots that glow like small stars. I marvel at how confusion can be resolved by focusing on the things from which its made. The magic of flocks is this simple switch between geometry and family."

Helen Macdonald has such a beautiful way with words. When you couple her love of animals and nature with her ability to observe the smallest details and her eloquence with words, you get these beautiful stories. These stories of nature, of birds are to be savored which means that you slow down as you read them and marvel in the beauty of nature.

"They used to think that we record a short term memory, then archive it later, move it to a different part of the brain to story it long term. But now they've discovered that the brain always records two tracks at once. That it is always taping two stories in parallel. Short-term memories, long-term memories, to tracks of running recollection, memory doubled. Always doubled."

If you like nature and especially birds, this book is sure to sweep you away and make you appreciate the beauty and wonder of nature. You will not be disappointed.

with gratitude to netgalley and Grove Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I am really sad that I did not enjoy this book since I loved H is for Hawk. This book kind of just drones on and is more about the author than the birds. Which would be fine if the style wasn't so rambly. It just didn't feel cohesive enough for me

A lovely collection of essays and anecdotes giving an insight in to Macdonald's world and the everyday natural world.

In her introduction, Helen Macdonald talks about a "quality of wonder and a love for the glittering world of non-human life around us." Included in her many essays, Macdonald cries out to the reader that it is critical to understand the many ways to look at the natural world in this time of environmental crisis. She describes many diverse creatures in the natural world, some essays harder to read than others. For instance, the essay on deer and their slaughter on highways was bloody and sad. However, her essay on the Peregrine falcons was exceptional. (Macdonald is a falconer, and her earlier book, H is for Hawk, is a beautifully written tribute to her late father and the steps she took to lessen her grief over his loss).

Birds are the subject of a number of the essays of Vesper Flights, and her description of the swifts and the true "vesper flights" was magical. You could almost see these birds, in massive numbers, swirling in the air at just the right time and just the right altitude:
"Gathered together in dense, wheeling flocks, thus their ascent began, 5 minutes later they were out of sight & then vesper flights took
them to heights of up to 8000 ft."

Macdonald attempts to reconnect people to the natural world and to inform about migration and nesting as well as identifying problems such as tree diseases and illegally captured birds, While she concentrates on her native Great Britain and Europe, she highlights the importance of why people everywhere should care about the non-human inhabitants of our planet. She's an enthusiastic lover of all species and her enthusiasm is infectious. Macdonald is a brilliant teacher and we would be wise to pay attention to her lessons.

The 41 essays comprising this collection are short, lyrical pieces that go deep, enlarging a small thing to reveal how huge it really is. It takes time to digest each essay. There are so many large concepts within the brief pieces.
This is not a book to power through. I found it difficult to read more than three at a time before sitting and digesting all the wonder and empathy that Macdonald had provoked. Then I marveled at the connections between essays -- sometimes overt and other times, subtle. Always clever and thoughtful. This would be a wonderful book to include in a science curriculum, but don't get me wrong. It's not a textbook. It's a book that bridges the personal and culturally relevant with science and nature. Macdonald weaves her own experiences with birds, ants, mushrooms, and more creatures and phenomena into conversations about humanity, about how nature and humanity interact and intersect. In one of my favorites, she begins by grumbling about house-cleaning before a visit from her landlord and transitions into the most beautiful and heart-tugging observations of an autistic boy and his interaction with her pet parrot. Come to think of it, this book would also be wonderful to include in a writing course curriculum. In any case. it has a lot to offer students and non-students alike about "the qualitative texture of the world." I recommend Vesper Flights to natural history buffs and nature lovers, but also to readers just looking to get their wonder on.

Vesper Flights collects 41 essays by Helen Macdonald over a vast range of topics from birds to forests to mushrooms to migraines. She has both an appreciation for and understanding of the natural world, and her eye for detail and poetic sense of phrase bring her subjects to life. She is also gifted at relating the personal effects of observing and interacting with wildlife. Standout essays include the titular story about the "vesper flights" of swifts, a celebration of the hawfinch, a supposition of how birds considered the human-made materials that they integrate into their nests, her story of working at a falcon rescue/ostrich farm, and a transformative story about the release of a rehabilitated swift. The weakest part of the writing are her attempts to weave human events such as Brexit or Trump's presidency into her essays; these felt forced into her narratives and served as a jarring contrast to the timelessness of most of the rest of the work. All in all, a lovely, intriguing, and satisfying look at the natural world.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC!

Unpopular opinion but I just didn't like it. It could very well be the ecopy I have. She would be talking about one thing and then without a break, she would start on another topic. I was so confused reading it, I just finally had to give up and move on. Like I said I'm the only one who didn't care for it. Give it a try, you may enjoy it like a lot of people did.

Thanks Netgalley for the copy for my honest opinion.

Helen Mcdonald writes beautifully about the human and natural worlds in Vesper Flights. Her beautiful and detailed description taught me about aspects of the natural world that I've never read about before. I enjoyed the way she blended details of her own life with her experiences with nature.