Friday 56 & Book Beginnings: The Great Animal Orchestra

It is sixteen thousand years ago, and the plain team with life. With the presence of the giant armadillo, American cheetahs, saber-toothed tigers, giant beavers, mastodons, camels, caribou, dire wolves, and ground sloths that stand as high as fourteen feet on their hind legs, wildlife is everywhere.

Book Beginnings

p. 3, The Great Animal Orchestra by Bernie Krause

Then a massive, hairy black hand tightly gripped my right shoulder. In one effortless motion, Pablo picked me up -- recorder, backpack and all -- and flung me fifteen feet through the air in a blur of sky, vegetation, and whooshing Gore-tex.

The Friday 56

p. 56, The Great Animal Orchestra by Bernie Krause

I won this over at The Coffee Addicted Writer's blog (Thanks, Billy!), as I have always loved music. Another non-fiction book to sink my teeth into!

A quick summary:

Krause is one of the world's experts in natural sound, and here readers listen through Krause's ears as he collects the sounds of purring jaguars, snapping shrimp, cracking glaciers--and the roar of the wild. It is an intensely personal narrative of life as it hits the ears, and of the planet's deeply connected natural sounds and music.

The Great Animal Orchestra is the story of one man's pursuit of natural music in its purest form, and an impassioned case for the conservation of one of our most overlooked natural resources-the music of the wild.

TGIF! What are you reading? Send me your link so I can check it out!