Reviews

The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery

alnauman12's review against another edition

emotional informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

mdevlin923's review against another edition

2.0

While it was an fascinating story about Sy Montgomery's personal journey meeting and learning about octopuses...I was disappointed. I was expecting it to be a more in-depth look at animal psychology and consciousness. Again, it was still a good book, but I feel that the title led me to believe it was something that I would be more interested in reading.

read_n_chill's review against another edition

I would have liked more interesting information about octopuses and their much-touted inner lives as advertised in the book's title, and less pseudo-philosophical rhetorical questions, as well as less focus on the author herself and the people she encountered during her work.

blakepalomino's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

labeanorita's review against another edition

adventurous funny informative inspiring sad fast-paced

4.75

headingnorth's review against another edition

4.0

My thoughts are here.

cesto's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful informative slow-paced

4.5

dionisea's review against another edition

emotional informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

3.75

helen_moore_reads's review

emotional funny hopeful informative medium-paced

4.0

daumari's review against another edition

2.0

Ehh. I was neither surprised nor astounded by Sy Montgomery's relationships with octopuses at the New England Aquarium, so the title feels misleading. It was a pretty decent memoir of her experiences and relationships with the octopuses, their caretakers, and volunteers at NEAq. Perhaps instead of "An Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness", an exploration of friends we made along the way?

This is the emotional opposite of [book:Octopus: The Ocean's Intelligent Invertebrate|7367893]- while Mather, Anderson, & Wood's book was chock-ful of information and scientific literature references, Soul sprinkles facts in between the emotional connections and resonances she gets communing with Kali, Octavia, and Karma (Jennifer Mather and Roland Anderson actually do make appearances as Montgomery travels twice to the Seattle Aquarium, once for a conference and once for the Octopus Blind Date). While I commend her empathy for non-humans, I do have to raise my eyebrow a couple times when she cites websites on love being transcendental vibrations or whatever... c'mon, Sy, while I get emotion is your schtick, pick something a little more grounded?

Anyway. Readable, but more as a memoir than any hard hitting science. Still haven't found the perfect cephalopod book, alas.