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

4.0

A student in the library where I work a few years ago wanted some help finding articles about 'animal intelligence' and I had been expecting a lot of stuff about primates, dolphins and whales, maybe the odd parrot, and I was surprised to see lots and lots of scientific articles about cephalopods. I thought this book would be an understandable pop-science summary of that research but it's something else entirely. This is a memoir of Sy Montgomery's friendships with some fascinating octopuses and some delightful human beings, mainly at the New England Aquarium. The action centers around the GOT which does not stand for some big budget TV series but rather for the Great Ocean Tank. Montgomery is great at describing the sense of wonder and amazement she experiences around all these strange sea creatures, and her love for animals, life and living in general is infectious. I found myself turning to this book more often than others in my currently-reading pile because it makes you feel good, even when octopuses are dying or humans are facing difficult situations. I am annoyed, though, that she doesn't provide proper notes or citations. There are a lot of anecdotes about specific octopuses and references to scientific studies, philosophers and religious texts that I would like to explore further but I don't know where she got them from. Also, it's just disrespectful to have a best selling book with so much content taken from others without giving them proper credit. Even her friend, the author [a:Elizabeth Marshall Thomas|36571|Elizabeth Marshall Thomas|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1406373034p2/36571.jpg], gets mentioned several times but not in the selected bibliography. However, this small complaint is balanced out by the fact that the small pictures of an octopus on the corner of every page become a flip-book animation.