New Book
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.
About the Author:
An important spokesman for Canadian cultural identity, Gibson was the initial organizer and a founding member of the Writers’ Union of Canada, and was its chairman in 1976. He was also an organizer and founding member of the Writers’ Trust, a non-profit organization, and was subsequently its chairman. From 1987 to 1989 he was president of the Canadian Centre of International PEN. In 1990, he won a Toronto Arts Award for writing and publishing, and, in 1992 he received the Order of Canada. He is the author of four novels: Five Legs (1969), Communion (1971), Perpetual Motion (1982), and Gentleman Death (1993), as well as two bedside companions, The Bedside Book of Birds (2005) and The Bedside Book of Beasts (2009). Graeme Gibson died in September 2019.
The Bedside Book of Birds with Margaret Atwood, David Sibley, Jonathan Meiburg, and Jessica Leber
The Bedside Book of Birds by Graeme Gibson Reviews:
“Anyone who has watched birds, studied them, given them the least attention,will find this a treat. It is a compilation of writings that celebrate themany ways people have engaged with birds – made companions of them,mythologised them, hunted and eaten them. There’s an account of a mocking thrush drinking from Charles Darwin’s hand on the voyage of the Beagle, and of a woman in Ohio who incubated 50 hens’ eggs by laying them alongside the body of her dying, fevered husband. This book is well worth buying for the illustrations alone.” —New Scientist
“The beauty of the writing and the illustrations contained in The Bedside Book of Birds is matched by the beauty of the physical book itself. Great pains have been taken by the author and the publisher to make this book a work of art, and they have succeeded marvellously.” —The Globe and Mail
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