If you've ever watched the sparrows tripping in your backyard or in a parking lot, picking up old french fries, then this is the book for you! Chester's writing and his journey through the life he shared with a tiny creature will melt your heart.

I expected to love this book, because I love birds. But after forty pages, I felt like I was stuck with a parent who just couldn't stop cooing about his new baby, how many glorious times it woke up at night, how variable and wondrous its poop, how small its clothes and loud its cries. I felt the same way about my babies, but I don't need to read a book about it. Truth be told, I love birds, but not House Sparrows. Sorry.

There aren’t enough stars to properly rate this book. You wouldn’t think a book about living with a rescue sparrow would be so deep, so richly amusing, so revealing of how far some humans are willing to go for love of a creature. I’m a sucker for animal memoirs and this is as good as they get.

"Keep Portland Weird" pretty much says it all. I enjoyed the general info about birds, learning within the context of the author's memoir. Probably could have been 50-75 pages shorter.

I completely enjoyed reading Providence of A Sparrow: Lessons from a Life Gone to the Birds by Chris Chester, both for the memoir and the education about sparrows. As a pet owner, I recognize that taking responsibility for another being often requires unforeseen sacrifices, so I found it amusing to see the extent that Chris Chester allowed a little foundling sparrow he named "B" took over his life and his home.

Here he tells the story of finding B:

My compassion having been hobbled by childhood memories of failed bird rescues, I almost decided to let B meet his fate without assistance from me. I remembered shoe boxes with plucked-up grass as padding, inappropriate offerings of bread and worms. The tiny, inevitable corpse come morning. Most of them we buried by our mulberry tree.

Because I'm averse to lice and all manner of pathogens and parasites with which wild birds are rumored to teem, I was really quite hesitant about picking B up. I belied for about a week at the age of six that I had parrot fever, a disease my father had mentioned in some forgotten context shortly before an encounter I had with a baby robin. My parents cleared up my misapprehension by pointing out that robins aren't parrots and that by my own admission I felt perfectly fine.

I remember my indecision clearly, am troubled by it. I could have chosen wrongly, and my life would have tacked in a different direction. I'd be unaware that a remarkable mind had died in my yard.

Chester, who deals with anxiety and was having a rough stretch in his life with personal losses, little "B" was a necessary tonic. Animal lovers everywhere recognize these healing qualities and it is heartening to see it in an increasingly wide variety of species.

I also loved the education about the intelligence of the sparrow. Bird brained is not really true as I learned when I read Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence—and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process by Irene Pepperberg.

All in all I found Providence of a Sparrow a remarkable book and enjoyed it greatly.

This book is not just for fans of memoirs or birds. I wouldn't describe myself as either, and it's one of the best books I've read in ages.

Chris Chester has a way with prose that is almost indescribable. You will laugh, you will cry, you will find yourself relating to this weird tale of a man and his sparrow.

Even if you don't think you'd like to read this book, I highly recommend reading this article about its author: [http://blog.oregonlive.com/oregoniane...].

A perfectly delightful memoir of life with a rescued house sparrow. Through his writing, we get to know the personality and eccentricities of both the bird, B, and the author. Highly recommended!

i love this book. amazing story of an ongoing relationship between a man and an ordinary sparrow that he rescues and learns to admire and love. what i like about this memoir is that his experience is tied to larger issues. the book is as much philosophical musing as it is memoir. not to be missed.

A Portland book... very sweet, kinda sad

This was a wonderful, quirky set of musings about life, small birds, philosophy, nature, and literature. Told with humor and wit, the story of raising and loving a fallen house sparrow, captures the heart.

Weird, funny, touching, and very Portland.

I will never look at birds the same way again. I'm very glad to have read this book.