I loved this year in the company of Margaret Renkl, who takes us on a backyard safari as she marks the passing of the year through the plants and animals that grace her with their presence. Although this is quite a gentle book, Renkl pulls no punches in showing us the effect that pesticides, pollution and other negative environmental factors are having on the rhythms of the year, whether through declining bird populations or unseasonal broods or the damage that drought and heat are wreaking on the visitors to her garden. I am unfamiliar with Renkl's part of the world, but the more time you spend with her, the more you feel like a neighbour. This is charming and also important writing. Renkl is a passionate advocate for the natural world and wears her knowledge lightly.

I absolutely adored The Comfort of Crows--it's a love letter to Nashville, to the South, and to the planet. The seasonal structure of these essays, interspersed with gorgeous artwork by Billy Renkl, was heartbreaking and heart-mending all at once. I can't wait to turn to this work year after year, season after season.

Thank you to Spiegel & Grau as well as NetGalley for the advanced copy!

4.5 stars. Lovely collection of essays about the natural world in the author's back yard (and at the cabin they visit), interspersed with (collage?) art. I read this on my old Nook so the art did not come through very clearly. I'll have to see if I can find a printed copy to check out the art.

The Comfort of Crows is a delight to read, with stunning art interspersed between short poetic essays, and a mellifluous command of language and nature. Each essay offers a deeply affectionate look at the world Renkl is immersed in that invites readers to appreciate their own surroundings, natural and familial, with a kinder, more protective eye.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for access to this ARC.

The Comfort of Crows is truly a nature lover's delight especially if you are concerned with the environment. It is educational and follows the life cycles with plants, animals, and families. It was quite a treat to enjoy life with Margaret.

This book is delightful. Her brother's artwork is lovely, and I like how he subtly matched the theme of each essay. The essays are compelling and made me reflect on how destructive human have been and continue to be. I wish she had included pictures of her pollinator garden, and the forest where she walks her dog. I'd definitely read more books written by her, or her essays. I wish more people would plant pollinator gardens, pay attention to the natural world around them, and read about how their "perfect" gardens are death factories for nature. This is a very approachable book for people just starting to read nature-themed books.

This was a beautiful collection of essays based on nature throughout the year, full of heart and soul, relaxing and an absolute joy to read
The writing is beautiful, lyrical while the illustrations in the book were lovely and went very nicely with the chapters in the book

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this arc

I love the lyrical writing and the artist’s beautiful illustrations. One could spend a year reading each essay during its calendrical season and always find something new in both. For those who read her first book, Late Migrations, this brings the reader up to day about her life over the last few years. It is similar in tone and style to those earlier essays and does not disappoint. I love how she understands and gives us words to describe that we are spiritual creatures made of nature. We are both linear and part of life’s renewing cycles. I received a Netgalley advance copy, and count it a privilege to be an early reader and reviewer of the book.

A lovely look through the year. The book covers all 52 weeks of the year with 52 chapters. In these chapters we see the changes in nature, the questions they ponder and we get small snippets of how their family changes through the year. While reading it I could really imagine the reader sitting writing while observing their garden , drink of choice in hand. The beautiful illustrations add colour to the pages and help visualise the words as you are reading through.

A beautiful book looking at the changes in nature, family and thoughts.

Received a complimentary copy of The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl from Spiegel & Grau/NetGalley, for which I am appreciative, in exchange for a fair and honest review. Scroll past the BOOK REPORT section for a cut-and-paste of the DESCRIPTION of it from them if you want to read my thoughts on the book in the context of that summary.

BOOK REPORT
I wanted to love this book. It seemed like Margaret Renkl, of whose work in the New York Times I am a very big fan, wrote it just for me……essays on nature and the passing of time.

It was good, don’t get me wrong; Ms Renkl is an incredible writer and always makes me think more and differently about important topics.

It’s just that it didn’t speak to my soul in the particular way I was expecting/craving. Also, while the illustrations by Ms Renkl’s brother Billy Renkl are wonderfully done and absolutely gorgeous in many respects, I really didn’t like them. They were too dark, on multiple levels, for me. So they greatly lessened my enjoyment of the book.

I know I’ll probably be in the minority with my take on The Comfort of Crows, and so be it. Who knows, maybe if I happen across it 10 years from now and pick it up again, I will love it.

For now, though, I’ll just settle for having spent some pleasant time with it, and offer this guidance to anyone who might be interested in reading this book: First, read the Author’s Note first; it provides excellent context, and I sure do wish I’d started with it. Second, treat this book more as a daily devotional than a “story.” I probably would’ve enjoyed it more had I dipped in and out of it over a period of time, vs reading half in one sitting and half the next.

DESCRIPTION
From the beloved New York Times opinion writer and bestselling author of Late Migrations comes a “howling love letter to the world” (Ann Patchett): a luminous book that traces the passing of seasons, personal and natural.

In The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl presents a literary devotional: fifty-two chapters that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard over the course of a year. As we move through the seasons—from a crow spied on New Year’s Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year, to the lingering bluebirds of December, revisiting the nest box they used in spring—what develops is a portrait of joy and grief: joy in the ongoing pleasures of the natural world, and grief over winters that end too soon and songbirds that grow fewer and fewer.

Along the way, we also glimpse the changing rhythms of a human life. Grown children, unexpectedly home during the pandemic, prepare to depart once more. Birdsong and night-blooming flowers evoke generations past. The city and the country where Renkl raised her family transform a little more with every passing day. And the natural world, now in visible flux, requires every ounce of hope and commitment from the author—and from us. For, as Renkl writes, “radiant things are bursting forth in the darkest places, in the smallest nooks and deepest cracks of the hidden world.”

With fifty-two original color artworks by Billy Renkl, The Comfort of Crows is a lovely and deeply moving book from a cherished writer.

This is a lovely ‘literary devotional’, a collection of essays, of thoughts on life, family, and Nature. The individual essays are not long, but they are all thought-provoking, and lovely. Her affection for her surroundings, as well as the flora and fauna are passionate, but also realistic. Fifty-two chapters, which follow the weeks of the year as the days pass. The things she takes notice of, both in the good and the not-so-good - at least for her and for the animals she cares for. A neighborhood that is slowly being altered in the name of progress, but that alteration is also diminishing the number of creatures that once thrived there, destroying their ability to thrive - at least there. For someone who cares about our planet, their surroundings, and the creatures who live there, it is both frustrating and heartbreaking for her. But then there are moments of surprise which also offer a momentary delight, as well.

This is simply a lovely collection, a love song to nature and a plea for the future. Anne Patchett calls is a ’howling love letter to the world, the story of what we’ve lost and what we can save, and the abundance of wonder in our own backyard…this book, like life itself, is a cause for celebration.’


Pub Date: 24 Oct 2023

Many thanks to Spiegel & Grau for the opportunity to read this lovely collection of essays.

This is a wonderful book. In the few days it took me to read it, I shared the author's joy, sadness, wonder and frustration over a year. It made me think about my own yard and the creatures I share it with, and all the other yards in various ecosystems I've inhabited.

This book was just a delight... I loved "coming along" with Ms. Renkl to her backyard to see what was going on. Her thoughts, her insights, her pondering... all perfection. She invites the reader to look at things in different ways, she invites new thinking, and most especially - she has inspired me to spend a year with her book, which I am planning on doing. I will join her by adding my thoughts and things I note in the margins.

I highly recommend this delightful, insightful little book!

Thanks to Netgalley and Spiegel & Grau for the copy of this book!

I very much enjoyed Margaret Renkl's Late Migrations and was thrilled to have the opportunity to read The Comfort of Crows. In this book, she presents the reader with 52 essays that follow the plants and creatures in her backyard over the course of a year. She includes the personal along with the flora and fauna, and there are delightful illustrations by her brother. One of the things I like best about Renkl's writing is that she is able to express joy and wonder about the natural world while still writing honestly about climate change. The only thing missing from my reading of this book was that I didn't read an essay each week and think about it, but I intend to buy a hardcover copy and do just that.

Thank you to Spiegel & Grau and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book. This book will be published on October 24, 2023.

I remembered enjoying the author’s earlier book, Late Migrations. However, a few essays into this collection and I put this one aside. Great for nature lovers, but the tone is a downer and I stopped reading.

Wow. What a beautiful book.

In bite-sized (3-6 page) essays, one from each week of the year, Margaret Renkl reflects on the natural world as viewed through the lens of her backyard. Although she doesn't shy away from hard topics - the brutality of nature, the changing climate, the other ways humans have interrupted the natural balance - the tone of this book is meditative and calming. There is comfort in nature's indifferent endurance, and so much beauty in even the humblest of places.

With that said, it would be hard to walk away from this book without a sense of frustration at the outsized impact human civilization has had on the natural world. I hope this book drives more of us to slow down and marvel at the wonders that surround us, and then to ask what we can do to help.

Thank you to Spiegel & Grau and NetGalley for providing an advanced reader's copy and the opportunity to review.

I enjoy reading Margaret Renkl’s column in "The New York Times," so I jumped at the chance for a NetGalley review copy of her newest book. "The Comfort of Crows" is a collection of 52 essays designed to be read weekly through the seasons, but I couldn’t put it down. Renkl is the nature writer I’ve been looking for: just enough detail about flora and fauna, just enough philosophical musing, and realistic concern for the environment, but not without joy. I believe I learned something in every essay. Here’s one passage I bookmarked: “Even now, with the natural world in so much trouble–even now, with the patterns of my daily life changing in ways I don’t always welcome or understand–radiant things are bursting forth in the darkest places, in the smallest nooks and deepest cracks of the hidden world. I mean to keep looking every single day until I find them.” Thank you, Margaret. Me too.

Margaret Renkl's newest collection of essays took me back to the early days of the pandemic, when amid all the uncertainty of life I found comfort in nature and in its ability to continue to grow and change even as the world seemed to be falling apart. In reflecting on the plants and animals in her backyard over the course of a year and the change of the seasons, Renkl reminds us that while it's hard to stop nature, our impacts are changing it and that we have a responsibility to do right by our fellow creatures. Her writing is calming and comforting, even as it raises the alarm of climate change. Highly recommend!

I loved this book and inhaled it in one great gulp on a long plane ride. Margaret Renkl's beautiful nature writing manages to conjure a year in her Nashville backyard--left to grow wild and home to a wide variety of flora and fauna--in such a way that I felt held in its haven while I read. Starting on New Year's Day and organzied in sections for Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall, "The Comfort of Crows" mixes events in the author's life with descriptions of the natural world that is their backdrop; I loved, for example, how Renkl coupled her ruminations about being an empty nester with her descriptions of watching multiple clutches of bluebirds in her garden nestbox hatch and fledge. There is certainly a lot of sobering content in "The Comfort of Crows"--there are essays about how temperature change is wreaking havoc with the migratory patterns of birds; how the pursuit of the perfect suburban lawn, and the poisonous fertilizers that entails, has almost made lightning bugs a creature alive in memory only--but, as the book's title suggests, Renkl still manages to find comfort in nature even as she worries for the future. This is a perfect read for nature lovers, mothers--anyone, really, who loves beauty in the natural world and in writing. The gorgeous illustrations provided by Renkl's artist brother Billy are a lovely bonus.

Thanks to NetGalley and Spiegel & Grau for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review. Loved it!

An eye-opening and enchanting read that feels like the author's personal journal, with such colorful, affecting observations of the natural world and very thoughtful overall. I would have enjoyed reading this over the year in line with the seasons as the book goes through them.