The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness: A Review

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

Sy Montgomery

Sherril Smoger-Kessous's review goodreads

Dec 09, 2019  ·  edit

really liked it

bookshelves: audio-book, cloudlibrary-audiobook, non-fiction, reviewed

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ 4 big bright stars for this beautiful book.
It was on my TBR list for a year and then I found it included in my library’s cloudlibrary audiobook list. I downloaded it and began reading (listening) immediately. This was a book that was enhanced by the listening experience because Sy Montgomery, the author, read it with such admiration and love for her subject matter, that it was infectious. I’ve read reviews that were critical of her writing style and that the book was less scientific than they expected. Believe me, it had more than enough science supporting the physical and behavioral descriptions of Athena, Octavia, Kali and Karma, the octopuses (definitely not octopi) featured in the book. However if it’s a truly scientific book you’re after, The Soul of an Octopus is not for you, but the name itself tells you that.

By the end of this book, you may or may not believe octopuses have a soul, but you will have absolutely no doubt that they are highly intelligent animals that have the ability to remember what they learn, to differentiate and remember people they meet and to have preferences. Whether those preferences are based mainly on the taste of the person (they have eyes, but they gain a large part of what they learn through taste via there many succors on each of their eight arms and they use them to suck enthusiastically on fingers, hands and arms) or something more esoteric, is not certain. The book is filled with fascinating facts about these intriguing invertebrates: they have three hearts, their neurons are in the brain, but of their 500 million or so neurons, around 350 million of them are clustered along the arms, so that their arms are capable of making decisions like finding which device holds food, or which color to use for camouflage depending on the location or problem-solving, including the ability to navigate mazes and open jars.

Though the octopus can be seen as foreign and alien, slimy and weird, almost scary in appearance, one finds oneself feeling as bereft as the author when the octopus she has learned to know and love, dies. You leave the book wanting more all things octopus, even perhaps one day engaging one in person. I look forward to reading an earlier book by Sy Montgomery, The Good, Good Pig.

Finding Chika: a little girl, an earthquake, and the making of a family: A Review

Four loving stars ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ for Finding Chika: a little girl, an earthquake, and the making of a family. Mitch Albom’s book, Tuesdays with Morrie was, by way of books that most touched my heart and soul, one of my life time favorites. Finding Chika is not the second coming of Tuesdays..., but it was pretty damn close. That these two people, Morrie Schwartz and Medjerda “Chika” Jeune came into the life of Mitchell David Albom was in itself a miracle. That Albom was able to translate his experiences with Morrie and later with Chika into books was a glorious gift to the world. In Tuesdays With Morrie Mitch Albom says about Morrie that he was able to “pull out of me a better, previous version of myself,” which he goes on to use 22 years later to help this young Haitian child almost as much as she helped him. 

There are so many moments of wonder throughout this small book of 235 pages that it made this agnostic reader think twice about god and prayer, both of which are staples in Chika's and her new family's lives. The central figure in this story is of course Chika. She is born into an earthquake in Haiti which kills her mother and she thankfully lands in the Have Faith Haiti Orphanage in Port-au-Prince, operated by Mitch Albom and his wife, Janine. Chika gets diagnosed with a rare, debilitating and deadly disease, DIPG. “Mr. Mitch”, which is how Chika refers to him, and Miss Janine,  become her "adoptive guardians", bringing her to the United States and their home, for treatment. Chika in her characteristic ways wins them over head over heals. Chika was wise beyond her years, brave, stubborn, resilient, extremely cheerful and playful and hopeful and often exuberantly loud and exuberantly loving. Chika was born tough. She was funny, brash, loud, bossy and she would wind up needing all of that to fight the insidious disease she had and so she did. Albom writes, “ no matter how engrossed we got in the medical struggle, you were indefatigable when it came to fun. You awed us with your spirit.” My recommendation is, read Finding Chika, before or after reading Tuesdays With Morrie. Then sit back and let it all soak in. I can guarantee you, you will be a better person for the experience.