Why am I passionate about this?

I was first a biologist, working with endangered species. Then I switched and spent fifteen years making nature documentaries with people like Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough. Then a humpback whale breached onto me when I was kayaking, this led to a life-changing adventure culminating in my becoming involved in efforts to use AI to translate the communications of whales! I wrote about this for my first book. My great passion was always reading and in becoming a writer I get to go deeper and more playfully into my favorite parts of filmmaking – following heroic and fascinating people on their adventures, reading hundreds of complicated scientific papers, and finding ways to connect these.


I wrote

How to Speak Whale: The Power and Wonder of Listening to Animals

By Tom Mustill,

Book cover of How to Speak Whale: The Power and Wonder of Listening to Animals

What is my book about?

I'm a wildlife filmmaker and had always been fascinated by whales, but when one breached onto my kayak, someone filmed…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Sense of Wonder: A Celebration of Nature for Parents and Children

Tom Mustill Why did I love this book?

This is a tiny little book and nowhere near as famous as her Silent Spring, but it doesn't need long to work its magic.

The Sense of Wonder helps you lay aside the habit you've developed of ignoring things you think you know, the familiar. To head into the woods with a child and hold back from telling them what things are and instead to see things with them and through those eyes.

I've done this with my daughters and have seen worlds I would have missed with them. As Carson writes: “Exploring nature with your child is largely a matter of becoming receptive to what lies all around you."

By Rachel Carson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Sense of Wonder as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

First published a half-century ago, Rachel Carson's award-winning The Sense of Wonder remains the classic guide to introducing children to the marvels of nature In 1955, acclaimed conservationist Rachel Carson-author of Silent Spring-began work on an essay that she would come to consider one of her life's most important projects. Her grandnephew, Roger Christie, had visited Carson that summer at her cottage in Maine, and together they had wandered the surrounding woods and tide pools. Teaching Roger about the natural wonders around them, Carson began to see them anew herself, and wanted to relate that same magical feeling to others…


Book cover of One Midsummer's Day: Swifts and the Story of Life on Earth

Tom Mustill Why did I love this book?

I read this book thinking I'd learn about a speedy little 40g bird that never stops flying and that people used to think flew to the moon in winter.

But the book is a non-fiction love song to all life on earth that spins outward weaving together everything it has taken to make a world that could have swifts in it. It is literally wonder-ful and a masterpiece.

By Mark Cocker,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked One Midsummer's Day as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

It takes a whole universe to make one small black bird

The bestselling author of Crow Country and writer of The Guardian's Country Diary tells the story of all life on Earth through a single day spent in the company of swifts.

'A jewel of a book' Caroline Lucas MP

Swifts are among the most extraordinary of all birds. Their migrations span continents and their twelve-week stopover, when they pause to breed in European rooftops, is the very definition of summer. They may nest in our homes but much about their lives passes over our heads. No birds are more…


Book cover of Shaman

Tom Mustill Why did I love this book?

This was one of those books that as I got past the halfway point I became sad as I realised I was heading towards the ending.

Set in prehistory, this book follows a young apprentice shaman making his way in a small hunter-gatherer band. I've never read a book that does such a good job of helping me live in my mind outside of our modern civilsation and with something approaching the view of the rest of the living world that our ancestors may have had.

By Kim Stanley Robinson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Shaman as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Vivid and beautiful . . . Astonishing' - Guardian

'A thrilling journey through an age of ice and stone - one of Kim Stanley Robinson's best!' - Greg Bear

An award-winning and bestselling SF writer, Kim Stanley Robinson is widely acknowledged as one of the most exciting and visionary writers in the field. His latest novel, 2312, imagined how we would be living 300 years from now.

Now, with his new novel, he turns from our future to our past - to the Palaeolithic era, and an extraordinary moment in humanity's development. An emotionally powerful and richly detailed portrayal of…


Book cover of A Sand County Almanac: And Sketched Here and There

Tom Mustill Why did I love this book?

I read this book at Cambridge University over 20 years ago when this was already 50 years old, and I can still remember the corner of the library I was in when I read the essay in it called Odyssey where he imagines the history of two atoms.

Starting from their beginnings in rocks and then as they move through ecological systems and different life forms – oak roots, buffalo, native peoples, settler wheat and cattle, and down with their muck out to sea. It was like a hallucination of nature writing and afterwards I saw what he described whenever I went into living systems. Vivid and crisp still, after all these years.

By Aldo Leopold,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked A Sand County Almanac as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Few books have had a greater impact than A Sand County Almanac, which many credit with launching a revolution in land management. Written as a series of sketches based principally upon the flora and fauna in a rural part of Wisconsin, the book, originally published by Oxford in 1949, gathers informal pieces written by Leopold over a forty-year period as he traveled through the woodlands of Wisconsin, Iowa, Arizona, Sonora, Oregon, Manitoba, and elsewhere; a
final section addresses the philosophical issues involved in wildlife conservation. Beloved for its description and evocation of the natural world, Leopold's book, which has sold…


Book cover of Exhalation

Tom Mustill Why did I love this book?

I'm recommending this entire lovely collection of stories for the one called "The Great Silence". It is told from the perspective of an endangered parrot discussing the Arecibo telescope.

It was written as an installation to be played on the telescope. It's a short story but also an astonishingly punchy compressed non-fiction primer on animal communication, but most importantly it will make you cry and you will read it again and again and again.

By Ted Chiang,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Exhalation as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Lean, relentless, and incandescent.' Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys

This much-anticipated second collection of stories is signature Ted Chiang, full of revelatory ideas and deeply sympathetic characters. In 'The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate,' a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and the temptation of second chances. In the epistolary 'Exhalation,' an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications not just for his own people, but for all of reality. And in 'The Lifecycle of Software Objects,' a woman cares for…


Explore my book 😀

How to Speak Whale: The Power and Wonder of Listening to Animals

By Tom Mustill,

Book cover of How to Speak Whale: The Power and Wonder of Listening to Animals

What is my book about?

I'm a wildlife filmmaker and had always been fascinated by whales, but when one breached onto my kayak, someone filmed my near death and it went viral, and then scientists used AI to identify the whale and tell me its life story I became obsessed with where this was leading. 

I discovered a revolution taking place in biology as machines help us see other species lives as they really are. This book traces my investigation into the deep ocean and the cutting-edge science of animal translation. What would it take to speak with a whale? Are we ready for what they might say?

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Christmas Actually

By Lisa Darcy,

Book cover of Christmas Actually

Lisa Darcy Author Of The Pact

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Cat lover Traveler Reader Amateur tennis player Foodie

Lisa's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

Every picture tells a story, but it’s not always the one we expect or remember. Christmas Actually is a festive drama about family and forgiveness and a snapshot of modern family life, addressing Instagram to motherhood and everything in between.

Why Christmas? My publisher wanted my new novel to have a festive theme, specifically set in Australia–sun, surf, sunburn, and prawns. Christmas in Australia is very different from Christmas in the UK, USA, and Canada. We typically wear shorts and t-shirts, eat salad and seafood for Christmas lunch, and play beach cricket in the afternoon. Despite the season, conflicts, secrets,…

Christmas Actually

By Lisa Darcy,

What is this book about?

Time spent with family can be challenging, especially at Christmas actually…

Kate Cavendish is stuck in a rut. That is until a former colleague contacts her and offers her a chance to fulfil her lifelong dream of becoming a successful photographer.

With her focus pulled in all directions by her children, her pregnant sister, her newly-dating mother, and the niggling worry that her husband might be having an affair, Kate is filled with self-doubt.

Then as the countdown to Christmas begins, and memories of her own childhood resurface, Kate’s anxiety deepens – both personally and professionally. Can she move on…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in prehistory, nature conservation, and Europe?

Prehistory 46 books
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