In other words, The Soul of an Octopus offers no revelation for a reader like me. So, so wooed by the idea of a philosophical engagement with cephalopods, I ignored the glaring “ New York Times Bestseller” warning also on the cover, and didn’t even flip to the back blurb, where I would have seen that the author is a “popular naturalist.” If I had paid more attention to such marginalia, I could have guessed that The Soul of an Octopus is geared towards a general, self-centered public that needs to be pampered and persuaded to reach the basic fact that animals are conscious, living beings - something I (naively) thought we all already realized the first time we saw a fly watching us watching “it.” I usually gravitate toward the terrestrial rather than the aquatic, and felt that this text, with its “National Book Award Finalist” stamp and undulating octopus illustration on the cover, would plunge me into the poetic nuances of these intelligent underwater beings. When I found this nonfiction nature book next to Ill Nature in the The Iliad Bookshop in North Hollywood, CA, I snatched it up precisely because I wanted to be schooled hard in octopuses’ magic. Octopuses are breathtaking upon first sight, no convincing me needed.
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