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Food Guides: Essential & Delicious

The Flavor Thesaurus: Pairings, Recipes And Ideas For The Creative Cook

By Niki Segnit

In the store

An invaluable resource for foodies: seasoned or unseasoned!

Food Rules: An Eater's Manual

By Maira Kalman, Michael Pollan

In the store

How should a person eat? Michael Pollan's beautifully illustrated guide has all the answers!

Curious History of Food and Drink

By Ian Crofton

In the store

A fun, irreverent voyage through food history - food lovers and trivia junkies rejoice!

Bookshelf twitter
Follow @bookshelfnews
@Sharonsmall56 @Peacebychoco @vortexmediainc @LloydLongfield @MikeSchreiner @CamGuthrie @reidschocolate… t.co/JPLxBtjsyB

RT @jeanmillswriter: WRITERLY EVENT! I’ll be talking #YA writing and publishing along with teen author @autumnbluestone & Robert Fleming… t.co/uRdYOOeZNN

@Sharonsmall56 We will be serving @Peacebychoco bars starting very soon! They are expediting them to us over the weekend!

@CamGuthrie Thanks Cam!

Buzzfeed: It's All About the Bees!
  • Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive

    By Mark L Winston

  • Keeping The Bees: Why All Bees Are At Risk And What We Can Do To

    By Laurence Packer

  • Bees: Nature's Little Wonders

    By Candace Savage

  • Storey's Guide to Keeping Honey Bees: Honey Production, Pollination, Bee Health

    By Richard E. Bonney, Malcolm T. Sanford

  • Beekeeper's Bible: Bees Honey Recipes And Other Home Uses

    By Collins

Meditation: Where to Begin

Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

By Thich Nhat Hanh, Jon Kabat-Zinn

In the store

The bible for secular mindfulness!

Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

By Jon Kabat-Zinn

In the store

A lovely poetic series of reflections to accompany Full Catastrophe Living...

Meditation For Dummies, with Audio CD

By Stephan Bodian, Dean Ornish

In the store

A wide range of meditation practices suitable for beginners with CD...

Secular Meditation: 32 Practices for Cultivating Inner Peace, Compassion, and Joy - A Guide from the Humanist Community at Harvard

By Greg Epstein, Rick Heller

In the store

From the meditation leader of the Humanist Mindfulness Group at Harvard University....

The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness

By Jon Kabat-Zinn, John Teasdale, Mark Williams

In the store

Highly recommended by many therapists, includes a helpful CD...

Non-Fiction

REVIEW: WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE A BIRD

Article By Barb Minett

Date: 28 Mar 2021

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What It's Like to Be a Bird: What Birds Are Doing, and Why--from Flying to Nesting, Eating to Singing

This is my dream holiday. I would like to hang out with David Sibley to see what it’s like to be David Sibley because more than anyone else in North America, apart from some in our indigenous population, he would know what it’s like to be a bird.

Birding seems to be in David’s DNA. His father was an ornithogist at Yale University. At the age of seven he started diligently drawing all the birds he saw and obsessively catalogued them for future research. During his youth he met the king, Roger Tory Peterson who probably unwittingly, passed the master birder torch on to him.

David has recently said that this book, What It's Like To Be A Bird, is the result of channelling his 10-year-old self by drawing the coolest things birds do.

And they definitely do cool and unbelievable things. Here are just a few.

- Down from ducks and is the most efficient insulation known.

- Bird brains process sound twice as fast as humans.

- Barn owls can catch a mouse in the pitch dark, guided by their hearing.

- Crows can solve problems that demonstrate an understanding equal to a five year old.

- Murres can dive 600 feet. No one knows how they survive the pressure at that depth or what they eat.

- A peregrine falcon has been clocked at 242 mph, the fastest time on earth by a living creature.

- A popular simile when describing someone who doesn’t eat much is to say that they eat like a bird. If this were true that would imply a human would eat more than 25 large pizzas a day.

- A robin can eat 14 feet of worms a day.

- A single chickadee can store up to a thousand seeds a day and remember where they are.

And there is so much more.

The introduction to the book is organized under different principles like sight, sound, feathers, movement, food and foraging. It’s full of fascinating minutiae about these wild creatures. Sibley has recently said that after 50 plus years of birding, working on this book has made him aware of how complicated birds actually are.

As compelling as the information is, the pinnacle of this book is his rendering of over 200 species. It’s not a long shot to predict that those living in the future might look at him as we now look at Audubon. These are two men who understood that watching birds enriches us in every way possible. To bird is to use your body, challenge your brain and enhance your sense of aesthetic. 

And as Emily Dickinson once said: "I hope you love birds too. It’s economical. It saves going to heaven."

Go To Non-Fiction
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