This collection of short essays about observations the author made regarding the goings-on in her backyard over the course of a calendar year was beautifully written (as is typical of Margaret Renkl's work), but I found I wasn't in the mood to read it far too late into my reading of it. I think I'll try to reread it at a different time in the hopes of enjoying it more.

This book is filled with 52 bite-sized essays—one for each week of the year. The essays encourage you to take real notice of your surroundings and to revel in the nature all around you. I gifted a copy to my daughter and bought one for myself—it will be lovely to re-read throughout the year.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Spiegel & Grau for providing this digital reviewer copy.

This was a bit of a tough read for me, but honestly I think it had more to do with the headspace I was in at the time than the actual book itself. I'm a mood reader, and at the time, this wasn't it. The characters were objectively interesting and thought-out though, so I will be returning to read it once more when I'm in a better headspace!

Thank you to the publishers and to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This book follows the changes through the seasons in the author's own backyard. In 52 short essays, you follow the flora and fauna that come in and out of her garden, and her thoughts about them.

I really liked the premise of this book, and thought it was promising. I was very interested through the first half, enjoying visualizing the changes and what the new seasons would bring. However about halfway through this book I found myself becoming bored, I felt things drag on a bit, and wanted a little bit more action. I understand that in this books case, there may not be the action that I was craving. It is a good book nonetheless, however not great.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

You could read the 52 essays in Renkl’s book one week at a time, but this time of year — when the trees are still bare and birds haven’t yet started to build their nests — seems to me to be a good time to start. The essays reflect on the flora and fauna in her Tennessee backyard, interspersing her observations with commentary on environmental concerns and personal experiences.

I'm going to be really honest. I forgot I had read this book until I was scrolling my own Storygraph history. I didn't review it there except for giving it 3.5 stars. Take with that what you will.

This is a beautiful collection of short musings for each week of the year. I love how this flows through every 13-week period of the seasons. It felt meditative to read. I could easily picture moments throughout each season where I watch squirrels through my kitchen window or catch a raccoon in the ditch surrounding our house that gives them perfect cover from passing cars or the visiting deer eating overgrown trees.

The format worked well for me. I found it easy to read. No one chapter was too long. The pictures and songs were nice additions, though sometimes I didn't feel like a song matched a particular section, I tried not to associate with what I just read and instead fitted it to the season.

I could relate a lot to watching a place you love change due to human-driven climate change. I felt the authors pain as she talked about the poison in her neighbors' yards and the way humans are so loud and disruptive. She showcases to us many times in her own surprising interactions with wildlife just how unforgivingly disruptive we can be. Despite all of that, there's a deep love for the world that surrounds us and the desperate care we want to give it.

"The visible world is astonishingly, heartbreakingly lovely."

The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl is a beautiful read with short stories about seasonal changes in the author's own backyard. I admire the author's introduction to the scenery and including details of the birds, temperature and weather. Renkl does a splendid job setting the backdrop and each chapter reads as a personal recounting or a chapter from a diary!

I've gained a newfound appreciation for the calming atmosphere and a rejuvenating break that nature provides from our work and everyday drudgery of life. Not to mention, the visuals and prose are stunning. I find the author's enthusiasm and love for the birds and animals to be contagious. For example, Renkl has multiple bird feeders, fallen leaves and mulch on the ground to prevent birds and critters from starving. She even lends help to tracking down a fox sick with mange.

As someone who's worked at the Botanical Garden, I have a renewed awareness to the impacts that humans have on these ecosystems and the small ways we can help mitigate the challenges animals face.

Picking up this book is refreshing as Renkl short stories are relatable, reminding me of my parents' green thumb, seasonal mood changes, and child-like curiosity in observing bird migrations. I love the personal touch Renkl adds about her own children, places she grew up, hobbies and volunteer activities she does for pleasure. This book is reminiscent of a coming of age story.

There's a movement or trend in nature writing occurring, as we find we have failed many nonhuman species including plant life (the mushroom books multiply) to find nature wherever we can whether it's in (if we are lucky to have one) our backyards or in the empty lot of an urban environment or in the many green spaces that infiltrate urban, suburban and rural environments. No longer do nature writers need to seek out the spectacular or the isolated. Instead as this book shows we can share the wonders that occur right before our eyes or ears or nose.

Renkl has been writing about her favorite place to observe life in its many forms for quite some time for the New York Times and here she organizes these observations over the period of a year, recounting in beautiful sometimes bittersweet prose what she observes during specific seasons in her backyard. At the same time as most of the short essays focus on hyperlocal eco-happenings, we get glimpses of family life, her own memories and experiences along with hints of human-centric political shenanigans. Ultimately, she argues observing the natural world allows humans sanctuary from such dreary matters but at the same time calls on us to become stewards. All of this rendered with detailed illustrations that make it very much a book you want to savor and relish.

Currently reading this a chapter per week with my mom. Love the weekly insights that correspond to the seasons. Growing up in Georgia, I can readily relate to many of the stories. Thank you to NetGalley and Spiegel & Grau.

I adore Margaret Renkl (and we share a hometown). This book is so beautiful that I purchased several copies as gifts. It's an absolutely stunning meditation on the natural world.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me.

Really enjoyed this one! Well written and great reading, especially while sitting in your own backyard!!

This is a beautiful book for anyone who loves nature; or for anyone who wants to grow that appreciation. Told in bite-sized chapters with beautiful prose and filled with whimsical illustrations, I tried to savor this as long as possible.

The chapter formatting would also make this one a great companion for carrying around (or leaving in the bathroom) when you only have time here and there to read.

I highly recommend picking this one up if you are interested at all!

Just like in her first book, Renkl works magic with her words. If you love nature writing like me, you won't want to miss any of Renkl's writing! The ultimate comfort read is how she weaves a gorgeous memoir together with the wonder of the natural world. She reminds you to slow down and take a closer look at the world around you, to examine how nature fits into your life and how you fit into nature. I can't recommend this book enough!

I am a sucker for nature writing especially if it goes season by season--it is my weakness. This book is a beautiful dive into a year in the life of a woman in central Tennessee (Nashville). I loved reading these little mini essays that cover each week in the year; this book has so much wisdom tucked into it that I may need to read it a few times before it all sinks in. The writing is lovely, it is easy to read and unburdened with academic terms or lofty ideals. Reading this book feels like a meditation on life and time reminding us that what we have is not permanent and nothing is promised, including tomorrow. My one complaint while reading was about the lack to dates to help locate you in the year but by the end of the book I got it: this book isn't a linear progression of a year but a circular one with layers of time and lifecycles built up that represent a year. I am not able to get outside of linear thinking BUT reading this book and thinking more cyclical and circular, I can just see around the edges of my linear time. Perhaps with more of my own time and wisdom in the future I will come back to this book and read it with a different light. Regardless, its a treasure and I highly recommend it for the nature lovers out there.

This book was such a delight. I really felt seen when reading this book. It is going to stay on my physical bookshelf for a long time.

“The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year” by New York Times opinion writer Margaret Renkl is a paean to close and gentle observation. Over the course of the Covid pandemic that reached the US in early 2020, Renkl took the opportunity to use the unstructured time to look carefully at what was happening in her yard in a Nashville suburb.

Renkl is that neighbor whose yard is a glorious mess of grass and wildflowers, despite the norms of the neighborhood. She doesn’t hesitate to advocate as best she can for the wildlife around her and the environmental practices that are causing animals to lose their natural habitats.

“The Comfort of Crows” is structured as a sort of book of days, or, more accurately, a book of weeks, 52 chapters, one for each week of the year, with titles like “How to Catch a Fox,” “Ephemeral,” and “My Life in Mice.” Her brother Billy Renkl, a professional artist, provides strikingly beautiful illustrations for each chapter. “We’ve been collaborating our entire lives,” she explained at a book signing I attended.

Although her observations focus on plants and wildlife, people enter the story as well - neighbors, friends, relatives. Her boys come home from college during the pandemic. Her husband Haywood watches coyotes from the front steps during sleepless nights. Friends come and go.

Renkl’s prose is lyrical and deeply personal. There’s a poignant quality to writing done during such a strange time, when all the old routines were overturned, leaving people to figure out what’s important to keep, what can be dispensed with. Renkl weighs the price nature pays for the determination of people like her to live on land that was, until fairly recently, undeveloped.
But attachment to home, their family’s lived experiences, and the memories created there have a powerful pull. Her home and its land are well beloved.

Readers who enjoy a humanistic approach to writing about the natural world will enjoy “The Comfort of Crows,” and are likely to find themselves looking more closely at the world around them as they go about their lives. It’s a reminder to slow down, even when the world isn’t in turmoil. To stop and find the worlds that lie adjacent to our own but that are often missed in the hustle and bustle of life.

Margaret's lyrical writing makes anyone want to sit in their own yard and notice the phenological changes that occur throughout our days. Many a writer has done something similar, taken something they are intimately used to seeing on a daily basis and challenged their own knowledge about the landscape and Renkl is no different.

Magical, beautifully written, tender, and thought provoking about how our lives intertwine so delicately with the natural world if we pay attention.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. This was such a lovely memoir and meditation on a year of observations of the natural world, even within the suburbs of a larger city. The writing was gorgeous, and the art between chapters was lovely. I liked the mix of lengths and topics, really a beautiful book for any nature lover.