Our monthly book club is for anyone who loves a good story, curious creatures, and the wild places that make the Georgia coast special. Each month, we’ll highlight a fun, thought-provoking book about wildlife, nature, conservation, or the environment that one of our staff have read or is currently reading. Plus we’ll add in a few questions and ideas to help you take the conversation outside!
We couldn’t do a nature themed book club without including this month’s book! If you have read it before, check out her other book, Secrets of an Octopus!
November — The Soul of an Octopus
Sy Montgomery
Montgomery becomes fascinated by the individual personalities and intelligence of octopuses while spending time with them in aquariums and in the wild. The result is part science, part adventure, and part meditation on what it means to form a relationship with an animal that experiences the world so differently from us. Her publisher’s reading guide even describes the book as funny, entertaining, touching, and profound.
Questions:
- What makes an animal “intelligent”?
- How much of an animal’s personality can we actually understand?
- Is anthropomorphism always bad?
- Does knowing an individual animal change how we think about its species?
