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Hotlists 2008

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Booklists

Lists of books, many of which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist , Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ). Additional titles of interest may be included on the lists. Titles are generally listed alphabetically by author.

 

 

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Overbooked specializes in providing timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction. Overbooked has been online since 1994. Overbooked is a work in progress . . .

Booklists and Suggested Reading

For the Birds Stars

 

Page Modified: April 5, 2008

Nonfiction & Fiction titles about birds and birdwatching.

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Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.

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Fiction

• Darwin's Wink: A Novel of Nature and Love
  Author: Anderson, Alison
  Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312331991 Date: 2004
  LJ
  An exquisite story of two naturalists who find unexpected love as they work to save a rare bird species on an island off the coast of Mauritius. "An exquisitely written, deeply felt novel."--Alev Little Croutier (Seven Houses).
  Updated 8.16.04
• Creation
  Author: Govier, Katherine
  Publisher: Overlook $ 24.95 ISBN: 1585674109 Date: 2003
  Booklist
  In this atmospheric and enthralling novel, Govier tells the story of John James Audubon, a man torn between the lies he has lived by and the truth he now needs. Her novel recreates the summer in which "the world's greatest living bird artist" finally understood the paradox embedded in his art: that the act of creation is also an act of destruction.
  Suggested Reading: Biographical Fiction
  Updated 4.28.03

Nonfiction

• The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship
  by Burger, Joanna
  Publisher: Villard $ 23.95 ISBN: 0679463305 Date: 2001
  LJ PW
  An internationally renowned ornithologist tells the extraordinary story of the parrot who took over her life, revealing fascinating parallels between humans and birds.
  Suggested Reading: Nature
• Fledgling Days: Memoir of a Falconer
  by Ford, Emma
  Publisher: Overlook Press ISBN: 0-87951-947-9 $ 25.95
  Booklist
  Falconry has been historically the sport of royalty and traditionally a pursuit of men. Emma Ford is neither royal nor a man, yet she is one of the most acclaimed falconers in the world today. Fledgling Days, her powerful memoir of life in the Kent countryside, where she learned from girlhood the art of falconry, is both a tale of personal discovery and a heart-warming and funny account of a country childhood.
  Suggested Reading: Nature
• The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker
  Author: Gallagher, Tim
  Publisher: Houghton $ 25 ISBN: 0618456937 Date: 2005
  LJ
  The author takes up the chase of an extinct--or at least elusive--bird heading deep into the trackless Southern swamps and bayous to determine once and for all if the Ivory-billed Woodpecker still lives.
  Suggested Reading: Nature
  Updated 6.29.05
• My Fine Feathered Friend
  Author: Grimes, William
  Publisher: North Point $ 15 ISBN: 0865476322 Date: 2002
  Kirkus PW
  One day in the dead of winter, New York Times restaurant critic William Grimes looked out the window into his backyard in Queens and saw a chicken, jet black with a crimson comb. His relationship with the hen eventually left him with a funny, enlightening, and heartwarming tale to tell.
  Suggested Reading: Nature
  Updated 2.18.02
• Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds
  by Heinrich, Bernd
  Publisher: Cliff Street Books ISBN: 0-06-017447-1 $ 25
  PW LJ
  A scientific investigation into the mind of the raven which lyrically addresses the existence of intelligence in a bird that has had an extraordinary relationship with humans throughout history
  Suggested Reading: Nature
• Spix's Macaw: The Race to Save the World's Rarest Bird
  Author: Juniper, Tony
  Publisher: Atria $ 25 ISBN: 074347550x Date: 2003
  LJ
  Tony Juniper's heart-stopping inside account of the race to save a rare blue parrot, the last of its species, is a priceless addition to nature literature -- and a timely portrait of Earth's endangered wildlife. - Publisher Marketing
  Suggested Reading: Nature
  Updated 9.08.03
• To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, a Son, and a Lifelong Obsession
  Author: Koeppel, Dan
  Publisher: Hudson $ 24.95 ISBN: 1594630011 Date: 2005
  LJ
  From a well-known outdoors and nature writer comes a narrative that explores a lifelong obsession with competitive birding.
  Suggested Reading: Nature
  Updated 5.18.05
• The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes
  by Matthiessen, Peter
  Publisher: FSG/North Point $ 27 ISBN: 0374199442 Date: 2001
  Publishers Weekly Booklist
  Sacred to many cultures and considered a bellwether by environmentalists, cranes have an important place in this world, here a leading naturalist and writer travels the globe in search of this prized--and vanishing--bird.
  Suggested Reading: Nature
• Waiting to Fly: My Escapades with the Penguins of Antarctica
  by Naveen, Ron
  Publisher: Morrow ISBN: 0688158943 $ 26
  Booklist
  In Waiting to Fly, Naveen, who fell in love with penguins 16 years ago, describes these creatures at work and at play, in love and in death, interweaving stories of his own experiences as a field scientist in Antarctica.
  
• Dreambirds
  by Nixon, Rob
  Publisher: Picador $ 23 ISBN: 0312245408 Date: 2000
  Booklist Library Journal
  Dreambirds is a quirky memoir of the author's upbringing on an ostrich farm and a delightful history of that prehistoric bird's unlikely role in fashion and food.
  Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars
• Audubon: The Making of an American
  Author: Rhodes, Richard
  Publisher: Knopf $ 28.95 ISBN: 0375414126 Date: 2004
  Kirkus PW Booklist LJ
  From the Pulitzer Prize—winning historian Richard Rhodes, the first major biography of John James Audubon in forty years, and the first to illuminate fully the private and family life of the master illustrator of the natural world.
  
  Rhodes shows us young Audubon arriving in New York from France in 1803, his illegitimacy a painful secret, speaking no English but already drawing and observing birds. We see him falling in love, marrying the wellborn English girl next door, crossing the Appalachians to frontier Kentucky to start a new life, fashioning himself into an American just as his adopted country was finding its identity.
  
  Here is Audubon exploring the wilderness of birds–pelicans wading the shallows of interior rivers, songbirds flocking, passenger pigeons darkening the skies–and teaching himself to revivify them in glorious life-size images. Now he finds his calling: to take his hundreds of watercolor drawings to England to be engraved in a great multivolume work called The Birds of America. Within weeks of his arrival there in 1826, he achieves remarkable celebrity as “the American Woodsman.” He publishes his major work as well as five volumes of bird biographies enhanced by his authentic descriptions of pioneer American life.
  
  Audubon’s story is an artist’s story but also a moving love story. In his day, communications by letter across the ocean were so slow and uncertain that John James and his wife, Lucy, almost lost each other in the three years when the Atlantic separated them–until he crossed the Atlantic and half the American continent to claim her. Their letters during this time are intimate, moving, and painful, and they attest to an enduring love.
  
  We examine Audubon’s legacy of inspired observation–the sonorities of a wilderness now lost, the brash life of a new nation just inventing itself–precisely, truthfully, lyrically captured. And we see Audubon in the fullness of his years, made rich by his magnificent work, winning public honor: embraced by writers and scientists, fêted by presidents and royalty.
  
  Here is a revelation of Audubon as the major American artist he is. And here he emerges for the first time in his full humanity–handsome, charming, volatile, ambitious, loving, canny, immensely energetic. Richard Rhodes has given us an indispensable portrait of a true American icon. - Publisher Marketing
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 9.22.04
• Watching Birds: Reflections on the Wing
  by Taylor, Ann
  Publisher: McGraw-Hill Book Company ISBN: 0-07-134866-2 $ 19.95
  Booklist
  Taylor chronicles her fascinating life as a curious and devoted amateur bird-watcher and nature-lover who has traveled the world in pursuit of her passion.
  Suggested Reading: Nature
• On the Wing: To the Edge of the Earth With the Peregrine Falcon
  Author: Tennant, Alan
  Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0375415513 Date: 2004
  Booklist LJ
  In this extraordinary narrative, a passionate observer of nature recounts his all-out effort to radio-track the transcontinental migration of the peregrine falcon--an investigation no one before him had ever taken to such lengths.
  Suggested Reading: Nature | Adult Books for Teens
  Updated 9.20.04
• The Condor's Shadow: The Loss and Recovery of Wildlife in America
  by Wilcove, David S.
  Publisher: Freeman ISBN: 0716731150 $ 24.95
  PW LJ
  A comprehensive overview of where we stand today ecologically and how we got there, Condor's Shadow describes how nature has responded to the forces human beings have unleashed upon it.
  Suggested Reading: Nature

 

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