The Fields Pond Book Group meets monthly on Thursday nights at 6:30 p.m. at the Orono Public Library, either in-person or via Zoom, facilitated by professional librarian Joyce Rumery. Please contact Joyce directly at rumery@maine.edu to be added to the mailing list for the Zoom meeting links, and to get a synopsis of each month’s featured title. Here is the title for June 12, 2025.
Mustill, Tom. How to Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication. 2022. 304 pp.
A near-death experience: in 2015, a breaching humpback whale landed on the kayak of nature documentarian Tom Mustill, who subsequently became interested in human-cetacean encounters. A quest for answers: to better understand his subject, Mustill dove into our shared history with whales, from the bloody past to the more hopeful present, in which scientists use hydrophones, oscilloscopes, and artificial intelligence to decode whale communication. But what would it mean if we were to make contact? Can we hope to one day understand animals? Are we ready for what they might say? Enormously original and hugely entertaining, How to Speak Whale is an unforgettable look at how close we truly are to communicating with another species – and how doing so might change our world beyond recognition.