H Is for Hawk

This book is so many things: a grief memoir, a story of a lifelong obsession (and skill) with birds of prey, and the unexpected delight of a story-within-a-story. Helen MacDonald manages to be intensely vulnerable while completely geeking out on a number of topics. This is a well-researched, incredibly well put together web of the stories humans tell ourselves, woven with vivid experience of the natural world. If you've never appreciated hawking or falconry before, you absolutely will by the time you reach the end of this book.