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Tentacle Porn of the Best Kind

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery

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You want all octopus all the time? Then this is the book for you, my friend! The Soul of an Octopus, written by Sy Montgomery, is an exploration of the beautiful, intelligent, mischievous octopus (plural is not octopi, as I once thought, but octopuses). The subtitle of the book is “A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness,” highlighting that through understanding the octopus, we can begin to understand animal consciousness. The octopus is one of the world’s most amazing, and sensitive, creatures. The author […]

More odds and ends

The Hummingbird's Gift by Sy Montgomery

Stitches by Anne Lamott

Poetic Justice by Amanda Cross

Insurrecto by Gina Apostelo

The Grass Dancer by Susan Power

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

Goodbye Columbus by Philip Roth

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The Hummingbird’s Gift – 4/5 Stars Mostly a published long essay, but still a compelling story about hummingbirds in general, but specifically those hummingbirds that become abandoned, injured, lost, or otherwise in need of human care to be rehabilitated and brought up to health enough to be part of natural life again. In this book, we find out that hummingbirds exist upon a series of contrasts. They are quite small, but fierce fighters. In the descriptions of the fighting from this book, two birds locked […]

A review from somone who comparatively knew very little about octopuses

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery

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I recently read a statement by a biologist that he felt fortunate to study biology because it offered a break from the solipsism of being human. Before reading this (and I desperately wish I could find this article again and quote and cite to this bioligist correctly, but alas it is lost to Facebook scrolling), I had been unable to completely understand why it felt like such a mental health treat to read Sy Montgomery’s Soul of an Octopus. The book sometimes feels a little […]

In which I recommend an exceptionally good movie in place of this book

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

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Scroll all the way to the bottom for movie recommendation! Is anything quite so disappointing as picking up a book that you fully expect to be a five-star read and being met with something you can only generously call mediocre? I was so excited at the prospect of learning about octopuses, those wonderful invertebrates, that I sat down with my beloved book darts, certain that I’d want to permanently tag many interesting passages. Now a few golden embellishments stare up at me from the pages, […]

Disappointing

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery

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I love animals, I love learning about animals, and I love reading books about animals. My main interests are animal behavior and animal intelligence. One of my favorite and most illuminating books on this subject was Animal Wise (2013) by Virginia Morell. Morell went into detail about some of the amazing, often unknown, talents of animals from ants to rats to birds. I have looked for similar books since and found nothing quite like it. So I was pretty excited when I discovered The Soul of an Octopus (2015) […]

Far and Away

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery

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The depths of the Pacific Ocean, native home to many of the octopuses that we encounter in the aquarium profiled by Sy Montgomery in this book, is about as alien an environment as I can imagine while still being on the same planet.  Montgomery doesn’t restrict herself to the octopuses in the tanks in her exploration of aquatic life, and goes scuba diving to see the cephalopods and their dens in the wild. Montgomery is an interesting author for exploring another world as she does […]



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