Customer Reviews

Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Dawn Light" is a new work by storyteller/poet/naturalist Diane Ackerman, in which she, natch, considers the world around her at dawn. It is chock full of close personal observation, research, and learning and shows a distinct resemblance to her previous best-selling A Natural History of the Senses. It also, in its level of detail, animal-loving spirit, and lushly-written prose, shows its kinship to her recent New York Times best-seller,The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story.

Ackerman gives us a year of dawns, as she considers that time of day at her homes in Palm Beach, Florida, and Ithaca, New York. We get her wonderfully fresh, sympathetic observations of the birds that sing dawn in, and all the other animals -- including us humans, she never lets us forget -- that then begin their days. She gives us a consideration of astronomy, particularly as it relates to dawn. But she does much more, roaming the current-day world, going as far as Australia's aborigines and India's holy rivers, to show us the dawn beliefs and rituals of other societies. She tells us that Jewish liturgy includes a list of blessings to be said first thing in the morning, one of them being thanks to God for giving us roosters to crow in dawn.

The writer also goes backwards in time to the ancients, giving us a good picture of the learned Greek scientist Archimedes; explaining how the works of the well-known lesbian poet Sapho came to be saved in that wonder of the ancient world, the library at Alexandria, Egypt: then came to be lost, and partially found again. She explains long-ago Celtic, Nordic and Roman dawn legends and myths. Yet, although her mind is evidently full of facts, inclined to poetry, and interested in everything she sees around her and learns, she never overwhelms us, but wears all this information lightly.

Well, let me moderate that previous statement slightly. Occasionally, very occasionally, she gets a little too intense for me; but I am not generally one to leap out of a warm bed of a cold winter's morning, not if I don't have to. Besides, her exploration and capture of winter's dawn, in upstate New York, at Ithaca, is thrilling; especially to me, who went to Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, and spent four years in that enchanted kingdom of the Finger Lakes. Many years ago now, I interviewed Dame Iris Murdoch, the outstanding Anglo-Irish writer, whose first published novel, Under the Net (Vintage Classics), was selected in 2001 by the editorial board of the American Modern Library as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. She asked where I'd gone to university, and I replied Cornell. She said she'd visited there, while working at Yale University, and it was "beautiful and mountainy," wasn't it. It surely was, and is. At any rate, I can remember one particular winter morning so clear and sharp that I did go out to clamber around the gorges, coming back only to find it was, to me, an astonishing minus 5 degrees Fahrenheit out. I'd give the writer an extra star for this book if I could, but, unfortunately, five's the limit.

This is a book to be read, re-read, and then read once again. Ackerman's views of nature are enlightening, informative, and spiritually transcendental. Having read the book, I looked at daily miracles in a new way, using the scientific knowledge she incorporates to better understand things I'd before taken forgranted. I gave my copy of the book to my daughter who shares my delight in nature. I know I will buy myself another copy for a second and third read.

This is an elegant and beautifully written book. The author has gift for observation that is profound. The reader can expect to learn much about the first light of day. The research behind the various aspects of this book is extensive. Diane Ackerman is to be applauded for this treatise on the beginning of each and every day.

This is a book that I want to share with all my friends and family. I have already given it to quite a few and recommended it to many.Diane Ackerman was introduced to me many years ago when my daughter was reading Moon by Whale Light. She said it was the kind of book that, after every few pages, you want to go shake someone by the shoulder and say, " Hey, listen to this!" Dawn Light is that kind of book too. Diane Ackerman's delight in the world of nature and art is truly inspirational. Her exuberance reminds one of the beauty that surrounds us if we would only stop to look and listen to the natural world and to the world of art. She is a national treasure.

Beautiful words. Words that make you slow down and savor --- the words themselves, the phrases, and the pictures and feelings they evoke. I've been fighting with myself since the moment I finished the very first essay.

I'm only allowing myself an essay a day, and when I finished the first day's reading, I had a little leap of joy in my heart, picturing myself sharing the book. Normally, that's what I do --- pass a book along when I have finished reading it. (So many books, so little time. I rarely read one twice. Better it should move along to its next reader than gather dust on my shelf.) But, right after the leap, a backtracking, a remembering of the times when I have had to buy a replacement book for one that called me back to double check a quote or lesson. I'm afraid I'm going to have to keep this one.

And thus the battle began. To share, or not to share.....

DAWN LIGHT: DANCING WITH CRANES AND OTHER WAYS TO START THE DAY comes from a poet and naturalist who offers meditations on animal life and new beginnings in the world. A year of dawns offers both natural history and spiritual reflection on animals rising or sleeping, offering observations of birds and flora reactions to light in a moving account recommended for any general lending library strong in nature topics.

Diane Ackerman shares her vast knowledge of nature, other cultures and the neuroscience of perception to leave the reader with a spiritual appreciation for the things in everyday life.

I gave this book a 1 star because I had to quit reading it. It is basically `intellectual' babble. You'll probably get more for your time and money by listening to the monologue of a well-schooled drunk at your local bar. I had to detox myself from her writing by reading J.K. Rowling where you get earthy, lively and colorful depictions of owls.