Hearby Monsters is a podcast about facing the unknown. I, uh, I start to float, float away from the earth. Have you ever smoked crack before? We're all kind of frantically searching for meaning. They have the neurotransmitters. I think we're all jugglers in some way. Yo, we're not broken. Crazy delinquents. We're in our last day, young man. Listen to Hear Be Monsters.

The podcast about the unknown.

On the KCRW iTunes page.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannon Foundation.

Booms.

Well, with me, big, with me, by Lannin Foundation. Boots. Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm. Today I'm very excited to have as my guest, Helen MacDonald, whose book, H's for Hawk, has been celebrated by all of its reviewers.

It's won several prizes.

And the fact of the matter is that it's a spectacularly

well-written, beautiful book about so many things. But the book really begins with the death

of Helen McDonald's father and her decision to adopt a goshawk.

Now, what led from one to the other?

It's not really particularly logical, is it,

step from one to the other.

And I really wouldn't recommend it generally

as a way of dealing with any kind of emotional difficulty.

Yeah, goshawks, So I don't know how far

back to go. I guess I'd always been deeply obsessed with birds of prey. When I was a kid, I had

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