A beautifully produced book, but much more gruesome than I realized when I bought it--sorry Mom!!! The selections are fascinating and well written and the illustrations are lovely and unusual, but the singular focus on the carnivorous nature of "beast" is just too much for me. I would expect that to be part of such a book, but it's really the central theme and because I don't have any affinity with the spiritual nature the author seems to ascribe to the taking and "offering" of life, it makes for generally disturbing nighttime reading. I can't imagine what Gibson has to say about birds...

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Gave this to my mom for Christmas. She loved it, so I'm borrowing it. Can't wait to start it tonight. ( )

An wildlife miscellany

"The Bedside Book of Beasts: A Wildlife Miscellany," by Graeme Gibson, is a compendium of writing about animals ranging from the ancient Greek writer Aelian to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Barry Lopez and beyond, along with occasional commentary by the author. It is arranged in a series of chapters concerning the relationships between predator and prey, animals and environment, mythology and animals, creatures and humans. Most gloriously, it is generously supplied with illustrations going back as far as the upper Paleolithic, which are absolutely gorgeous. Printed on heavy paper, this is a volume to be savoured slowly, dipping into it a page at a time, the better to draw out its pleasures. A complete delight. ( )

"When you turned from this ideal form of supple beauty--of terrific force in repose--of silent and royal disdain--to the human creatures who were timidly gazing at it, open-eyed and open-mouthed, it was not the human beings who had the superiority over the animal. The latter was so much the superior that the comparison was humiliating."
- Barbery D'Aurevilly (1808-1889), France

"It is the desperate wail of the Cicada, surprised in his quietude by the Green Grasshopper, that ardent nocturnal huntress, who springs upon him, grips him in the side, opens and ransacks his abdomen. An orgy of music, followed by butchery."
- Jean-Henre Fabre (1823-1915), France

"Kill every buffalo you can!" Colonel Richard Dodge urged a sport hunter in 1867. "Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone."
- William Temple Hornaday (1854-1937), United States

"The natives say if you listen to a lion roaring you can hear what he says 'Hee-e-e inchi ya nani? Yangu. Yangu. Yangu.' (Whose country is this? Mine. Mine. Mine.)"
- K. de P. Beaton, details unknown

The book is filled with gorgeous illustrations and a diverse collection of writing by various authors. There's so much to be found here, including excerpts from literature, poetry, journal entries, and folklore. Large swaths of the book dealt with death, violence, and man's relationship with the natural world. All these elements came together to lay bare the lives of beasts, both real and imaginary. ( )

http://www.fromseedtobloom.com/2010/10/03/the-bedside-book-of-beasts/ ( )