A Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous

by Caspar Henderson

Recommendations from our site

“Finally, I’d like to mention a book by a friend, Caspar Henderson, whose latest book, A Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous, is about sound. It’s a science book, but it’s also a book about appreciating nature and life. It’s beautifully, beautifully done. ‘For me, writing this book has been part of an attempt to listen more deeply and hold on to a sense of aliveness,’ Caspar writes. You can also read his interview with our deputy editor, Cal Flyn, who spoke to him about books on sound in all its manifestations.” Read more...

Notable Nonfiction of Fall 2023

Sophie Roell, Journalist

The book, according to the author

“I’m not a physicist or an acoustician, but a rough layman’s definition could start with this: sound is a vibration through matter. It’s a wave passing through molecules and jiggling them as it goes. But that’s not all. Sound is also the perception of those waves by a living being with a sensory apparatus that can detect them. The sensory apparatus may be a pair of ears, but it can also be something else!

When I was a small child we used to visit my grandparents in a small village in Hampshire on weekends. On Sunday mornings the peels of church bells would echo off the steep hillsides surrounding the village and you would be surrounded by this extraordinary sound. That may be where it started for me. I’ve also had an intense—perhaps excessively intense—love of various forms of music since my teens. A few years ago while I was working on a book about the sense of wonder, I was entranced by the sound of thousands of birds flying overhead, and I realised that for all my love of sound and music there was a lot I did not actually know. A Book of Noises arose from that realisation. It’s a brief tour through the nature of sound and music, and a visit to the sound worlds of space, the non-living Earth, non-human life, and humanity.”

The best books on Sound recommended by Caspar Henderson