The Bedside Book of Birds: An Avian Miscellany

By Graeme Gibson

Book Overview

Featuring a new foreword by Margaret Atwood In this stunning assemblage of words and images, novelist and avid birdwatcher Graeme Gibson offers an extraordinary tribute to the venerable relationship between humans and birds. From the Aztec plumed serpent to the Christian dove to Plato's vision of the human soul growing wings, religion and philosophy use birds to represent our aspirational selves. Winged creatures appear in mythology and folk tales, and in literature by writers as diverse as Ovid, Thoreau, and T. S. Eliot. They've been omens, allegories, and guides; they've been worshipped, eaten, and feared. Birds figure tellingly in the work of such nature writers as Gilbert White and Peter Matthiessen, and are synonymous with the science of Darwin. Gibson spent years collecting this gorgeously illustrated celebration of centuries of human response to the delights of the feathered tribes. The Bedside Book of Birds is for everyone who is intrigued by the artistic forms that humanity creates to represent its soul. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385696949
• ISBN13: 9780385696944
• Release Date: March 2021
• Publisher: Doubleday Canada
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 2.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.2" x 6.6"

Customer Reviews

A treat for birders and lovers of folktales in the natural history vein.

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...

This One's Special

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.

A marvelous confection...

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...

WOW!

This is among the most beautiful books I have ever owned. An exquisite collection of poems, stories, journal entries and reveries about birds that is complemented by extraordinary, rich artwork throughout. Graeme Gibson's careful choices bring out the intrigue, the mystery, the beauty and mythical qualities of birds throughout the world. A lavishly published work of the highest standard, I didn't think books like this...

An artistic and literary tome on birds

This book is a sumptuous, lusciously illustrated homage to birds of all sorts.. common and exotic. It is printed on rich, delicately tintured stock, which frames the splendid artwork that accompanies each contribution. It is composed of poems, meditations, folklore, sagas, journal notes, involving birds, from people who've been inspired.. or irritated by them. The artwork includes famous Audubon watercolours, oils, aboriginal...