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The Bedside Book of Birds: An Avian Miscellany | 
 enlarge | Author: Graeme Gibson
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy Used: $5.80
You Save: $24.15 (81%)
New (28) Used (35) Collectible (4) from $5.80
Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 21389
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.5
ISBN: 0385514832
Dewey Decimal Number: 598
EAN: 9780385514835
Publication Date: October 25, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In this stunning assemblage of words and images, novelist and avid birdwatcher Graeme Gibson has crafted an extraordinary tribute to the venerable relationship between humans and birds.
Birds have ever been the symbols of our highest aspirations. As divine messengers, symbols of our yearning for the heavens, or avatars of glorious song and colour, they have stirred our imaginations from the moment we first looked into the sky. Whether as the Christian dove, or Quetzalcoatl—the Aztec Plumed Serpent—or in Plato’s vision of the human soul growing wings and feathers, religion and philosophy have looked to birds as representatives of our better selves—that part of us not bound to the earth.
With the passion of a birdwatcher and hoarder of words, Gibson has spent fifteen years collecting the literary and artistic forms our affinity for birds has taken over the centuries. Birds appear again and again in mythology and folk tales, and in literature by writers as diverse as Ovid, Thomas Hardy, Kafka, Thoreau and T.S. Eliot. They’ve been omens, allegories, disguises and guides; they’ve been worshipped, eaten, feared and loved. Nor does Gibson forget the fascination they hold for science, as the Galapagos finches did for Darwin. Birds figure charmingly and tellingly in the work of such nature writers as Gilbert White, Peter Matthiessen, Farley Mowat and Barry Lopez.
Gorgeously illustrated, woven from centuries of human response to the delights of the feathered tribes, The Bedside Book of Birds is for anyone who is aware of birds, and for everyone who is intrigued by the artistic forms that humanity has created to represent its soul.
From The Bedside Book of Birds ~
Stevenson remembered the story of a monk who had been distracted from his copy-work by the song of a bird. He went into the garden to listen more closely, and when he returned, after what he thought were only a few minutes, he discovered that a century had gone by, that his fellow monks were dead and his ink had turned to dust. The song of the bird had given him a taste of Paradise, where an instant is as a hundred years of earthly time. Was the same true of time in hell, Stevenson asked himself.
Alberto Manguel
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
Bedside book of birds January 7, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Very, very few books this physically beautiful are published today. This is a true gem! The author has collected poems, short stories, etc. from authors worldwide which concern or include birds. The numerous illustrations are classic-looking drawings similar to Audubon and that style of drawing. There are no photographs of birds. The paper is of unusually weighty quality and the binding is first class.
This is a book that the avid bird-watcher can hand down to a younger generation. Makes a wonderful gift!
A treat for birders and lovers of folktales in the natural history vein. January 18, 2007
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
I purchased this book as a gift for my Aunt Jen, to whom I am deeply grateful for instilling in me a love of the outdoors in general and a love of birds in particular. She is now mostly confined to a bed and I wanted to get her a book on an outdoor subject she loves which she can enjoy while indoors. Before sending her the book I was able to get a good look at it and I feel confident she will enjoy it. The book is beautifully illustrated and the stories are well-written. All of them are interesting, some are humorous. I highly recommend this book.
This One's Special June 18, 2006
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
A beautiful book, excellent for a gift as well as for one's own library. The illustrations are many, varied, and lovely. The text is engrossing.
Beauty on every page June 1, 2006
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
I've found myself coming back to this book time and time again, just to open at random. I would recommend this book without hesitation.
A marvelous confection... March 29, 2006
31 out of 31 found this review helpful
I found this book in the gift shop of the Point Reyes National Seashore visitor center on a recent trip to Inverness and had to own it.
As an artifact it's quite beautiful: the illustrations and text and heft of the volume is sumptuous. This is, as the name says, a bedside book; a substantial hardcover with a creamy, coated-stock dustcover instead of a slick and glossy coffeetable book. The point of it is to open the volume and read.
Many such books are just random tidbits that catch the collector's fancy or have some private meaning to the person pulling the work together but which don't form a larger, coherent work. Somehow, though, this book seems to have an ebb and flow that seems natural, as if Gibson himself it taking ownership of the words, the images, the flavors here.
I bought the book for feel and flavor, but am pleased to note that it is worth owning as a volume in its own right, a perfect bedside companion. Highly recommended.
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