The young farmer, shouldering the stock of his double-barrelled shotgun, and sighting, squeezed off both triggers at the flock of crows rising from his field. He was discouraged to see that he had not hit even one of them, though the sun was momentarily obscured and the sky became dark as a storm of feathers fell all around him, and each feather that fell to ground, was, he realised, a tale that had to be told.
For use in schools and libraries only. When the weather changes and the ever-falling snow threatens to engulf all the animals, it is Crow who flies up to receive the gift of fire from the Great Sky Spirit.
Here he is, husband and father, scruffy romantic, a shambolic scholar--a man adrift in the wake of his wife's sudden, accidental death. And there are his two sons who like him struggle in their London apartment to face the unbearable sadness that has engulfed them. The father imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness, while the boys wander, savage and unsupervised. In this moment of violent despair they are visited by Crow--antagonist, trickster, goad, protector, therapist, and babysitter. This self-described "sentimental bird," at once wild and tender, who "finds humans dull except in grief," threatens to stay with the wounded family until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and the pain of loss lessens with the balm of memories, Crow's efforts are rewarded and the little unit of three begins to recover: Dad resumes his book about the poet Ted Hughes; the boys get on with it, grow up. Part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief, Max Porter's extraordinary debut combines compassion and bravura style to dazzling effect. Full of angular wit and profound truths, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers is a startlingly original and haunting debut by a significant new talent.
As heard on NPR's This American Life “Absorbing . . . Though it's non-fiction, The Feather Thief contains many of the elements of a classic thriller.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air “One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever.” —Christian Science Monitor A rollicking true-crime adventure and a captivating journey into an underground world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers, for readers of The Stranger in the Woods, The Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief. On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin's obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins—some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin's, Alfred Russel Wallace, who'd risked everything to gather them—and escaped into the darkness. Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins? In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation. The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man's relentless pursuit of justice, The Feather Thief is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man's destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature.
As seen on PBS's American Spring Live, one of America's great nature-writers explores the magic and science of feathers Feathers are an evolutionary marvel: aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. They date back more than 100 million years. Yet their story has never been fully told. In Feathers, biologist Thor Hanson details a sweeping natural history, as feathers have been used to fly, protect, attract, and adorn through time and place. Applying the research of paleontologists, ornithologists, biologists, engineers, and even art historians, Hanson asks: What are feathers? How did they evolve? What do they mean to us? Engineers call feathers the most efficient insulating material ever discovered, and they are at the root of biology's most enduring debate. They silence the flight of owls and keep penguins dry below the ice. They have decorated queens, jesters, and priests. And they have inked documents from the Constitution to the novels of Jane Austen. Feathers is a captivating and beautiful exploration of this most enchanting object.
If you have ever fly-fished or wished you had, Stream Feathers is a must read book to experience the mystique of fly-fishing in the wild Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania. Something quite unexpected happens to those who fish downstream for two miles in the company of the naturalist, Hoxie. There are adventures and unexpected encounters with wildlife around each bend. All combined with the thrill of fighting a pugnacious trout. In a sequence of 16 episodes, each farther down stream from the other, we follow Hoxie in his valiant quest to catch a trout larger than his dads 24 inch Brown Trout. In the end -- through deep truths found -- beating his dads trout becomes inconsequential. Photographs and Haiku reveal Hoxies adventures and chance discoveries in each chapter.
A wonderful conglomeration of tales ending with the cessation of a happy life. Commencing with the wondrous. if dark. tale "The Crows Feather" and including the tales; "A picture upon the wall," "A Wolf in the Hills" and the strange distopian tale; "Wisdom lies in adaptability" all built in the mercurial mind of Raymond Walker.
