The Summer of Dead Birds

The Summer of Dead Birds

Author: Ali Liebegott

Publisher: Feminist Press at CUNY

Published: 2019-03-12

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 1936932512

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“An often-sweet, often-startling autobiographical novel-in-verse about going through a divorce and the death of a loved one—meditating on life’s big and small losses, and the ways the universe at once reminds us of and assuages those losses.” —O, The Oprah Magazine “A fierce, funny, agonized, cracked-open aria in homage to the presence and passing of fiercely loved things.” —Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts how does a person dislodge the scenes that burn inside them like arsoned cars? Ali Liebegott is reeling from a fresh, painful divorce. She wallows in grief and overassigns meaning to everyday circumstance, clinging to an aging Dalmatian and obsessing over dead birds. Going through the motions of teaching and walking her dog, she eventually decides to hit the road: Ali and Rorschach at the Center of the World. This autobiographical novel-in-verse is a chronicle of mourning and survival, documenting depression and picking apart failed intimacy. But Ali Liebegott’s poetry is laced with compassion, for herself and the reader and the world, as she learns to balance the sting of death with the tender strangeness of life.


The Summer of Dead Birds

The Summer of Dead Birds

Author: Ali Liebegott

Publisher: Amethyst Editions

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 105

ISBN-13: 9781936932504

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A queer poet documents depression and grief in this autobiographical novel-in-verse.


A Summer of Birds

A Summer of Birds

Author: Danny Heitman

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2020-02-05

Total Pages: 135

ISBN-13: 080717369X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Over the summer of 1821, a cash-strapped John James Audubon worked as a tutor at Oakley Plantation in Louisiana’s rural West Feliciana Parish. This move initiated a profound change in direction for the struggling artist. Oakley’s woods teemed with life, galvanizing Audubon to undertake one of the most extraordinary endeavors in the annals of art: a comprehensive pictorial record of America’s birds. That summer, Audubon began what would eventually become his four-volume opus, Birds of America. In A Summer of Birds, Danny Heitman recounts the season that shaped Audubon’s destiny, sorting facts from romance to give an intimate view of the world’s most famous bird artist. A new preface marks the two-hundredth anniversary of that eventful interlude, reflecting on Audubon’s enduring legacy among artists, aesthetes, and nature lovers in Louisiana and around the world.


The Summer Book

The Summer Book

Author: Tove Jansson

Publisher: Sort of Books

Published: 2022-04-14

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 1908745193

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Celebrating 50 years of Tove Jansson's classic, bestselling novel Featured in the BBC 2 Between the Covers Bookclub Special (Eurovision series 2023) 'Distils the essence of summer' Robert Macfarlane 'Magical, life-affirming' Elizabeth Gilbert The Worldwide Classic about a tiny island and larger love. An elderly artist and her six-year-old grand-daughter while away a summer together on a tiny island in the gulf of Finland. As the two learn to adjust to each other's fears, whims and yearnings, a fierce yet understated love emerges - one that encompasses not only the summer inhabitants but the very island itself. Written in a clear, unsentimental style, full of brusque humour, and wisdom, The Summer Book is a profoundly life-affirming story. Tove Jansson captured much of her own life and spirit in the book, which was her favourite of her adult novels. With a foreword by Esther Freud and an afterword by Sophia Jansson (on whom the child 'Sophia' is based) who returns to the island during the pandemic at the point of becoming a grandmother herself. Includes a 15pp epilogue by Tove's niece Sophia Jansson - the inspiration for 'Sophia' - on a personal and moving return to the island. 'Eccentric, funny, wise, full of joys and small adventures. This is a book for life.' Esther Freud 'Tove Jansson was a genius. This is a marvellous, beautiful, wise novel, which is also very funny.' Philip Pullman


Summer and Bird

Summer and Bird

Author: Katherine Catmull

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2012-10-02

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 1101591595

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An enchanting--and twisted--tale of two sisters' quest to find their parents When their parents disappear in the middle of the night, young sisters Summer and Bird set off on a quest to find them. A cryptic picture message from their mother leads them to a familiar gate in the woods, but comfortable sights quickly give way to a new world entirely--Down--one inhabited by talking birds and the evil Puppeteer queen. Summer and Bird are quickly separated, and their divided hearts lead them each in a very different direction in the quest to find their parents, vanquish the Puppeteer, lead the birds back to their Green Home, and discover the identity of the true bird queen. With breathtaking language and deliciously inventive details, Katherine Catmull has created a world unlike any other, skillfully blurring the lines between magic and reality and bringing to life a completely authentic cast of characters and creatures.


How to Know the Birds

How to Know the Birds

Author: Ted Floyd

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1426220030

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"In this elegant narrative, celebrated naturalist Ted Floyd guides you through a year of becoming a better birder. Choosing 200 top avian species to teach key lessons, Floyd introduces a new, holistic approach to bird watching and shows how to use the tools of the 21st century to appreciate the natural world we inhabit together whether city, country or suburbs." -- From book jacket.


Vesper Flights

Vesper Flights

Author: Helen Macdonald

Publisher: Grove Press

Published: 2020-08-25

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0802146694

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The New York Times–bestselling author of H is for Hawk explores the human relationship to the natural world in this “dazzling” essay collection (Wall Street Journal). In Vesper Flights, Helen 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 the massive migration 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.


Each Little Bird that Sings

Each Little Bird that Sings

Author: Deborah Wiles

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9780152051136

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Comfort Snowberger is well acquainted with death since her family runs the funeral parlor in their small southern town, but even so the ten-year-old is unprepared for the series of heart-wrenching events that begins on the first day of Easter vacation with the sudden death of her beloved great-uncle Edisto.


Negative Space

Negative Space

Author: Lilly Dancyger

Publisher: Santa Fe Writers Project

Published: 2021-05-01

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1951631048

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Despite her parents' struggles with addiction, Lilly Dancyger always thought of her childhood as a happy one. But what happens when a journalist interrogates her own rosy memories to reveal the instability around the edges? Dancyger's father, Joe Schactman, was part of the iconic 1980s East Village art scene. He created provocative sculptures out of found materials like animal bones, human hair, and broken glass, and brought his young daughter into his gritty, iconoclastic world. She idolized him—despite the escalating heroin addiction that sometimes overshadowed his creative passion. When Schactman died suddenly, just as Dancyger was entering adolescence, she went into her own self-destructive spiral, raging against a world that had taken her father away. As an adult, Dancyger began to question the mythology she'd created about her father—the brilliant artist, struck down in his prime. Using his sculptures, paintings, and prints as a guide, Dancyger sought out the characters from his world who could help her decode the language of her father's work to find the truth of who he really was.