A review by kellitrusedell
The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery

adventurous informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

One of my top favorite reads last year was Remarkably Bright Creatures, a fiction novel that features a giant Pacific octopus named Marcellus, and my favorite documentary of the year was My Octopus Teacher. Yep, it’s safe to say that in 2023, I fell in love with octopuses. 💗 This year, Sy Montgomery’s book The Soul Of An Octopus caught my attention, it being a non-fiction book about an animal I have recently come to love and appreciate, and that it was written by an author I had previously read and enjoyed (If you haven’t already, check out her book The Good Good Pig 🐷). Throughout this book I enjoyed reading about Montgomery’s experiences with octopuses; I learned so much about octopuses, sea life, and scuba diving; and I found it interesting how she  weaved in deeper topics throughout, like karma, soul, and free will. The center of the book contains gorgeous, captioned, color photos of the octopuses she wrote about, which are wonderful. And my most favorite feature of the book: the black-and-white images of an octopus at the bottom right corner of each page which, when flipped correctly, act like a flip book, showing an octopus swimming along the ocean floor. So fun and unique, I flipped through and smiled at it often, and I had to share it with my husband and sons! Some parts dragged a little for me, but overall I love all the facts and experiences shared throughout this book, and it made me want to go check out the Giant Ocean Tank (GOT) in the New England Aquarium. I give this book four intelligent and stunning octopuses, like the lovelies mentioned in this book: Athena, Octavia, Kali, and Karma. 🐙🐙🐙🐙