Sy has been out and about talking about her new book for young adults, Amazon Adventure. You can hear her in this short interview on WGBH, along with the subject of the book, Scott Dowd, Senior Aquarist at the New England Aquarium. For more than 20 years, Dowd and his colleagues having been working with the native people to save many of the fish that make their way to North America’s home aquariums. Amazon Adventure tells the surprising journey of these small fish.

While at the aquarium, OctoNation caught up with Sy. She fields a few questions in this short video. OctoNation is the largest Octopus Fan Club with 83,900 followers on Instagram and 32,500 followers on Facebook. That’s one of their t-shirts below.

Sy also spoke to the BBC for the show, Natural Histories: Octopus. This “programme” (as our English friends spell it) will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 15 August at 11am, and repeated at 9pm the following Monday. It’ll be kept on the BBC iplayer and be available to download until September 15.

The Octopus and the Professor. The summer reading list of former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is, as you’d imagine, long on weighty political books and studies of inequality, but he’s been immersed in a “fascinating book by a fellow named Sy Montgomery.”

“I, never, personally have been terribly interested in octopuses,” Reich admits, “but this is an absolutely fascinating, interesting, enjoyable, thought-provoking, piece of work.” To which we can only add that if you haven’t seen Reich’s documentary Inequality for All, you’re missing the best concise explanation of this problem, and the best use of graphics to explain statistics. Inequality for All is as swiftly told as a thriller or a murder mystery.

As part of the celebration of Henry David Thoreau’s 200th birthday, Sy was honored to receive the Henry David Thoreau Prize from PEN New England, a chapter of PEN America. The Thoreau Prize is awarded annually to “a writer demonstrating literary excellence in nature writing.” Previous winners include Gretel Ehrlich, E. O. Wilson, Gary Snyder, Peter Matthiessen, Diane Ackerman, and Linda Hogan.

Bella Polpo. Ricca, a publisher in Rome, has just bought the rights to publish The Soul of an Octopus (or Polpo) in Italy. And a publisher has just signed up to translate Journey of the Pink Dolphins into Chinese.

The Andrew Luck Book Club. Sy enjoyed talking with Andrew Luck, the Indianapolis Colts quarterback, about The Soul of an Octopus. You can hear Andrew and Sy discuss play-action passes, scrambling on third-and-long, and protecting the pocket. Actually, no. It’s all octos and Mr. QB asks good questions.

Brain Pickings. The nimble Maria Popova has gained a large following for her discussions of fascinating thinkers, artists, and writers. Recently writing about the “central mystery of consciousness,” Popova referred to The Soul of an Octopus, which she also wrote about in earlier post.

The wonders of inner lives. Coco and her mom, Jessica, are reading The Soul of an Octopus. Coco is 11 years old. She has autism and Rett Syndrome. She doesn’t speak, and until two years ago everyone thought she was nonverbal, says Jessica. But then Jessica discovered a way for Coco to communicate by pointing at big capital letters on a clear sheet. Coco goes letter-by-letter until she has completed her thought. “Now we know she is highly verbal and has been misunderstood her whole life (and is still so misunderstood by many),” says Jessica.

They are having a good time reading Sy’s book. “She is really identifying with these octopuses!” says Jessica. Here are Coco’s thoughts about three different parts of the book:

“Octopuses are awesome. Octopuses are clearly more intelligent than they look. Autistic people are also more intelligent than they look. Besides autistics there are probably many other creatures who are misjudged because they look or move differently than what humans consider to be normal. Seeing the truth about someone when it contradicts what you always thought might be scary for some. Leaving behind long held assumptions can be difficult because doing so can feel antithetical to our core beliefs.

“Dying octopuses can become violent. People can easily misunderstand octopus behavior . They are a lot like humans yet so alien to us too. Can we presume to understand these creatures? Getting to know them is a first step. Having been misunderstood my whole life has made me particularly sensitive to this.

“Do animals feel what we feel? Do they attain wisdom through life experiences like humans? Scientists have looked for evidence except they are assuming that behaviors are the only indicators of the internal workings of the creatures they are studying. I am a creature whose behaviors are closely monitored. Bcbas [Board Certified Behavior Analysts] track and analyze my behaviors. So do they know my mind? Dare I say certainly not. I behave in ways that can be confusing. I scream sometimes when nothing is wrong. I pull hair when I want kids to like me. Once my cat came up for a pet and I picked her up by the tail. Never would I want to hurt her. I love her. My hare brained compulsions do not add up to the sum total of my intellect. Speaking of hares, who is to say that they do not have brilliant brains? It’s time we humans stopped making assumptions that are unfair and unfounded. Calling a bunch of ignorant observations data does not make it scientific fact. There are wonders and inner lives in all animals and people.”

Thank you Coco and Jessica. Sy loved hearing from you.

The most wonderful things just show up in Sy’s mail. These games were created by a reader in Poland, graphic designer Magdalena Stadnik. She had read the Polish translation of Journey of the Pink Dolphins. “I love it,” she wrote. “The book is un-put-downable magic.” The game Creatures include beautiful and endangered animals like the hirola, the gharial and the indri. Another game, Spectres, highlights animals who recently went extinct. Each species is represented in beautiful detail on black and white cardboard cards. To play, you put all the cards showing the animals face down next to one another. Turn over any two; if they’re identical, collect them and reveal another two. If different, put them back where you found them, and let another player take a turn. Your aim, like Noah’s, is to collect matching pairs. The player with the most matching pairs wins.

Dear Match Book: What Books Best Capture Science and Nature? Match Book is a New York Times dating service for readers looking for a good book. (You know the plot: Book club seeks a good book, meets a good book thanks to the Times, and the rest is a page-turning happily ever after.) One science book that Match Book suggests? The Soul of an Octopus.

The Soul of an Octopus is #4 on the Pacific Northwest Independent Bestseller list of nonfiction paperbacks for May 28.

What do NFL Quarterbacks do in the off season? Andrew Luck is reading The Soul of an Octopus. Top that Tom Brady.

Bank Street College of Education has chosen The Great White Shark Scientist as one of the Best Children’s Books of 2017.

New translations on the way. ART Grup Editorial has signed up to publish The Soul of an Octopus in Romania. And a Spanish publisher will bring The Spell of a Tiger to that country.

Sy spoke at the Boston March for Science. She was speaking to kids and teens, to future scientists:

I want to tell you about a very special place I visited a few years ago.

It was on New Guinea—a place that has been called a Stone Age Island. Located north of Australia, it’s been known as “a lost world,” “a land that time forgot”. New Guinea was mostly unexplored by outsiders till the middle of the 20th century, for a number of excellent reasons: Tangled jungles. Steep mountains. Erupting volcanoes. Aggressive crocodiles. Poisonous snakes. Tropical diseases. Also, cannibalism and headhunting.

But because of New Guinea’s long isolation, there are animals who live here that even Dr. Suess couldn’t invent. Birds who grow tall as a grown-up, with helmets of bone capping bright blue heads. Spine-covered, worm-eating mammals who lay eggs. And kangaroos who live in trees. Real kangaroos, with pouches, who climb into towering, moss-covered trees, and then jump out of them—and bounce away!

That’s why I came—for the tree kangaroos. Working on one of my books for young readers, I joined a team of researchers trying to do what others had told them was impossible. We wanted to capture and radio collar a particular kind of tree kangaroo—the Matchie’s tree kangaroo. It’s about the size of a big cat, with orange and yellow fur and a sweet pink nose. It spends most of its time 80 feet high in the trees. It eats orchids.

Nobody had done this before.

To get to the animals we had to hike along some of the toughest trails I’ve ever done. For three days, we struggled up steep slopes slippery with sucking mud. We were up so high—10,000 feet—we were literally in the clouds. The air was thin and hard to breathe. The second day of hiking, I quietly wondered whether I was having a nine-hour heart attack.

Leading our group was my friend, Dr. Lisa Dabek. And it’s her story I want to share with you today, because this scientist is as amazing as the Matchie’s tree kangaroos she studies.Holly with carrot

Lisa always loved animals, but as a kid growing up, she couldn’t even have a dog. She had to give away her beloved cat, Twinkles, when she was 11. Why? Because she had terrible allergies, and asthma so bad she would wake in the night gasping. She couldn’t play sports. She loved nature but she lived in New York City. She wanted to be a wildlife biologist. So what could she do?

Despite her asthma, Lisa found ways to study animals as a child. She studied fish at the New York Aquarium. Fish didn’t give her asthma. Neither did the seals. At her house, on her asphalt roof of her parents’ apartment, she studied ants. Lisa let nothing get in her way.

Lisa met her first tree kangaroo at a zoo. She knew right away they were special. When she learned they were endangered, she vowed to anything she could to help them—and that meant she had to learn how they lived in the wild.

She started traveling to New Guinea to meet them. The mountain hikes were really hard! She carried an inhaler to help her breathe. She took special pills to open her airways. But she discovered that America’s polluted air made her asthma worse. The clean air of New Guinea made it better!

Breathing, though, was only one of her problems. The second was finding the tree kangaroos. She spent weeks looking for them. The tree kangaroos were hiding because people hunted and ate them. After five weeks in the field, Lisa saw only two tree kangaroos.

And then she didn’t see another for seven years.

But Lisa kept trying. Finally she found a group who hadn’t been hunted and weren’t afraid. But up in the trees they were still hard to see. She needed to outfit them with radio collars—but everyone told her it would be impossible. People said the telemetry you need to detect the signal from the radio collars wouldn’t work in the cloud forest. There were too many trees. They’d interfere with the signal. Folks told her not to even try.

I can see how people might get discouraged trying to do something like this. At the end of every day, our little group was exhausted, bruised from falling, and wet and muddy. Once we ran out of food and had to eat ferns. Other things went wrong. Equipment didn’t work in the rain. Our satellite phone failed. We worried about the stinging nettles, and also about the leeches—they sometimes get in your eye.

But all our discomfort vanished the minute we saw our first wild Matchie’s tree kangaroo. He was even more adorable than we imagined. His colors were crazy-brilliant. His nose was the cutest, softest pink. He looked like a big stuffed animal. And his fur was as soft as a cloud.

How do I know? Because I touched it—because we captured, radio collared and tracked FOUR tree kangaroos on that trip. And today, Lisa has data on many dozens of tree kangaroos, data that is helping to save this species and the cloud forest upon which these and so many other wonderful animals—and the wise, local people—depend.

So why am I telling you about New Guinea as we march together here half a world away in Boston?

Because this story reminds us the power of what science can do. Science can change the world.

And this story also shows us what science demands of us.

Science demands we share our data. But today, much data–like on climate change–is being repressed; for political gain, many of our leaders openly deny the facts–supported by billions of data points from thousands of scientists— showing beyond a doubt that our climate is changing due to man-made pollutants. That’s bad news for tree kangaroos—and for whales and reindeer and eagles and coral reefs.

Science can show us the solutions. But science also demands determination. And we all need to muster that determination right now—to not only gather data, but get it out there—to heal the world.

Doing science isn’t always easy. But we’re not going to quit. Like Lisa, we’re not going to back down. We’re going to keep collecting and sharing and discussing the data— we’re going to find the way to save the tree kangaroos and their forests–and our oceans, and our air, and the climate of our beautiful Earth.

Thank you.

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Girls & Gills. When Loula Thomas turned 6 years old, she had a “Save the Sea” birthday party. “Loula is a shark, octopus and manatee lover,” says her mother Tassia, adding that Sy is “pretty much a hero in our family.” Loula is a member of The Gills Club, which connects girls and women marine scientists. As party favors, Loula gave out copies of Sy’s The Great White Shark Scientist and The Octopus Scientist. And her big sister, Penny, age 10, made a Pin The Dorsal Fin on the Shark game (seen behind Loula).

Sy is a guest blogger for the National Geographic where she asks readers to Consider the Octopus.

Octo in La La Land. The Soul of an Octopus is number 10 on the Los Angeles Times paperback nonfiction list.

This drawing was a present from the Fishes Staff at The Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center. The Senior Aquarist, the charming Evan Culbertson, introduced Sy at the evening All Henrico Reads program. (You old Muscle Car enthusiasts will note that the Octo is at the wheel of a GPO, which is strikingly like a 1969 Pontiac GTO.)

The Great White Shark Scientists has won the Riverby Award from the John Burroughs Association. Each year the John Burroughs Association honors authors, illustrators, and publishers of the best published nature writing.

The Riverby Award is given to “excellent natural history books for young readers that contain perceptive and artistic accounts of direct experiences in the world of nature.” This year seven books were honored.

The Japanese edition of The Soul of the Octopus has hit the Ginza, and who is that on the cover, Anime-style, but the author herself sporting flowy Farrah Fawcett hair (1970s, go look it up).

The Great White Shark Scientist is in fine company on the long list for the Green Earth Book Awards. Take a look at all these great books. The Green Earth Book Award is the nation’s first environmental stewardship book award for children and young adult book.

Ośmiornica, Tintenfisch, 문어 (Mun-eo), たこ (Tako), 章鱼 (Zhāngyú), Poulpe, Oсьминог (Os’minog). That’s how to say octopus in all the languages that The Soul of an Octopus has been translated into: Polish, German, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, French, and Russian.

Even Gumbo Limbo Sea Turtle Rescue’s mascot, Luna, is reading The Soul of an Octopus! Could The Soul of a Sea Turtle be next?

Gumbo Limbo Nature Center is a joint venture of the City of Boca Raton, Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District, Florida Atlantic University (FAU), and Friends of Gumbo Limbo. Each year, more than 190,000 visit the 20-acre preserve on a barrier island and learn about sea turtles.

“You might think a book on cannibalism would be upsetting, but this one’s not. It’s refreshing,” writes Sy in her New York Times book review of Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History by Bill Schutt. Cannibalism, writes Sy, is a “jolly book” that is “full of surprising news.”

Amazon Adventure is a Junior Library Guild Selection. The Junior Library Guild is a book selection service serving many thousands of libraries, which rely on them to guide their book purchases for young readers. The Guild reviews books in advance of publication and select those they consider the best. Amazon Adventure will be published in July.

Octo Rising. That octopus book keeps swimming upward. The Soul of an Octopus is now at No. 4 on The New York Times Animals Bestseller list for January.

душа осьминога (Dusha os’minoga) – That’s Soul of an Octopus in Russian (or so says Google Translate). Sy’s Octo book will be published in Russia.

“Sy Montgomery’s books create an image of our collective ancestry,” says a review of three of Sy’s books posted by the Human Venture Community. “Why is this important? When we see humanity in all living beings we care about more than just our own species. No matter what other communities we belong to, we belong to two fundamental communities, life and humanity. Obligations to smaller communities, be it our social group or nation, can blind us to needs the greater community of life. If we connect our own process of becoming with humanity’s process of becoming, it will shift the way we prioritize and carry out our obligations. This is critical because the kind of learning and solutions we need for our civilizations greatest threats, need to be informed with all of life in mind.”

The review covers The Soul of an Octopus, Birdology, and Walking with The Great Apes. The Human Venture Community in Calgary, Alberta, is “committed to ongoing research and learning by exploring Human Learning Ecology,” which seeks to understand “the priorities, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors” that created the environmental crisis.

Octo Obama-rama. As a parting gift to President Obama, the famous Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, has sent him 10 books and it’s quite an interesting gathering, including a certain octo book. (They’ve also sent the incoming president a different set of books.)

Last December, Powell’s “invited customers to suggest books for President Obama and President-Elect Trump as they move into new roles. After hundreds of recommendations, the store chose 10 books each for the incoming and outgoing presidents ‘with a focus on informative, entertaining, and inspirational titles.’ The books are being sent in time for Inauguration Day,” says the store.

“In a note to both recipients, Powell’s CEO Miriam Sontz wrote: ‘All of us have great faith in the transformative nature of books — we are passionate about the impact reading can have on our personal lives and on the life of our country. Those of us in the book business are also optimists. We know that life will always present challenges and books will always be there to help us.’”

The 10 books for President Obama:

A Full Life by Jimmy Carter

The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen

Citizen by Claudia Rankine

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery

My Beer Year by Lucy Burningham

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Goodbye Mr. President, we will miss you. And should you have any questions about octopuses, just pick up the Octo Hotline – you know, the phone with 8 buttons that changes colors and has tentacles – and call Sy.

My Sweet Octopus. That will be the Japanese title for The Soul of the Octopus to be published in February 2017. Or: 愛しのオクトパス――海の賢者が誘う意識と生命の神秘の世界. The translation of the subtitle is: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness and Life, Invited by the Intelligent Creature in the Sea. A very popular Japanese cartoonist, Chiisakobe O.C., has drawn the cover.

As 2016 ends, The Soul of an Octopus is on these lists of bestsellers at independent bookstores for the week ending December 25: #7 in New England, #9 in the Pacific Northwest, #10 in Southern California, #3 in Northern California, and #10 in the Mountains & Plains.

Forbes, the business magazine, has chosen The Soul of an Octopus as one of the 10 best popular science books for 2016.

An octopus walks into a movie… Sy received this report from friend and editor Phil Pochoda, reporting from a “grand Los Angeles theater” where he was seeing Jim Jarmusch’s new movie, Paterson: “Towards the end of the movie, the hero, after a distressing event, is wandering through a bookshelf of primarily poetry books (not least, William Carlos Williams’ Paterson, which book seems to underlie much of the plot and characters in the movie). But third from the end of the shelf is … Soul of an Octopus (though it’s hard to figure out why it would have been included). In any case, it felt good to see it there.” An octopus always dresses up a movie.

“Science is for Girls.” A MightyGirl.com says it is “the world’s largest collection of books, toys and movies for smart, confident, and courageous girls.” They have chosen a mighty girl who Sy knows: Temple Grandin. Sy’s book about Temple is now on Mighty Girl’s list of books about female scientists.

Books of the Year:

The Soul of an Octopus is at #20 for December on The New York Times Science book bestseller list.

The Great White Shark Scientist has been named as one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2016.

Delancyplace.com has chosen The Soul of an Octopus as one of its favorite books of 2016. Delancyplace.com delivers a daily book excerpt to its 290,000 email subscribers.

The Soul of an Octopus is one of this year’s top ten audio books on Libro.fm’s list of the bestselling audio books at indie bookstores. Sy read her book for that recording – but not, alas, at the wonderfully named Octopus Garden Sound Studio.

The National Science Teachers Association has named The Octopus Scientists one of the outstanding science books for students.

The Nonfiction Detectives – “Two intrepid librarians review the best nonfiction books for children” – have chosen The Great White Shark Scientist as one of the top books for 2016.

Go, pig, go! The Good Good Pig is now in its 16th printing. There are nearly 109,000 copies in print.

And in news of Octopodes, The Soul of an Octopus is on these lists of bestsellers at independent bookstores for the week ending December 4: #5 in New England, #7 in the Pacific Northwest, #5 in Southern California, #3 in Northern California, and #11 in the Mountains & Plains.

Octo-Potus. The West Wing Weekly is an episode-by-episode discussion of one of television’s most beloved shows. This podcast has gathered a big audience. It is co-hosted by one of its stars, Joshua Malina, along with Hrishikesh Hirway of Song Exploder. So naturally they’d get to discussing octopuses. In Episode 1.07, “The State Dinner,” the podcast hosts have this discussion:

Q: “Did you know that octopi is not the plural of octopus?”

A: “I do know that because my wife just read a book called The Soul of An Octopus and now all she talks about is octopuses.”

They then discuss Inky the octopus’ escape from the aquarium tank: “Apparently they are incredibly smart. They just have very few venues in which to show their intelligence.”

“Yeah, if we lived underwater they would be overlords.”

“That’s right. They’d absolutely would be our overlords. One of the many reasons I refuse to live underwater.”

Club Book brings authors to the Twin City area. Sy visited in November. You can listen to the live event.

Sy’s octopuses are still swimming toward new friends. The Soul of an Octopus in #19 on The New York Times Science Bestseller list for November. And it’s on these lists of bestsellers at independent bookstores: #5 in New England, #4 in the Pacific Northwest, #4 in Northern California, and #10 in the Midwest.

The Micro Activist Connor Berryhill and his Dad entering Monterey Bay.

Sooo Coool!! Do octopuses have feelings? Do they love? That’s what the young “Micro Activist” Connor Berryhill wanted to know, so the 9-year-old naturalist made an amazing video.

The Micro Activist says: “I can’t think of a single super hero that has as many abilities as one of these buggers! How about Star Wars then…Nope nothing so bizarre as an octopus in any of those movies either. Harry Potter, Lord of the rings? Nope and Nope!

“What really confuses me is how so many kids go crazy about these made up things when any of use can just go right out there and actually meet the strangest and coolest living alien that anyone could possibly imagine… ever!

“So to better answer that question, I guess I’d have to say my Mom and Dad agreed to help me make this video if it would “Get me to stop talking about them every frigging moment of every day!” Thanks for the help Dad and Mom! and I really will try to stop talking about them, as much…but they’re just Soooo Coool!!”

Sy loves the Micro Activist’s octo video.

Temple Grandin has been chosen as the book middle school students will be reading next year for One Book, One Philadelphia.

As of October 26, The Soul of an Octopus is on six regional independent bestseller lists: #1 in the Pacific Northwest, #8 in New England, #12 in the Mountains & Plains, #9 in the Midwest, #8 in Southern California, and #3 in Northern California. And #16 on The New York Times Science Bestseller List.

One Pig’s Odyssey. Tony Morrison, Annie Proulx and Homer. That’s what the staff and board at the New Hampshire Humanities are reading. Each year they post a list. This year’s list includes Beloved, Barkskins, The Odyssey, and other titles including The Good Good Pig.

When the librarian is a scuba diver and wears a shark hat, you know it’s a fun school. Sy had a great time visiting the Bluebell Elementary School in Pennsylvania on October 18 with Lisa Ruff (in the shark hat) and Donna Branca (hatless) — and tons of really cool kids.

Love & Happiness. Global Climate Change. Challenges of Race Relations. Octopuses have something to contribute! These are just 3 of the 30 classes at University of Idaho using The Soul of an Octopus for its Common Read Program. This October the entire freshman class at the University of Idaho is reading The Soul of an Octopus. On Sy’s whirlwind visit to campus she visited classes, met with fellow journalists, toured the entomology museum, hiked up Paradise Ridge to watch the sun rise over the Palouse Prairie, gave a public program…and even met a Giant Palouse earthworm (soon to star in its own Boston Globe column. Is the Hub ready for the G.P. E.?).

Another honor for The Soul of an Octopus: it has won the 2016 Orion Book Award. Part of the book first appeared in this fabulous magazine so Sy is particularly grateful to Orion’s editors.

The Soul of an Octopus has reached an auspicious number: its 8th printing.

As of October 2, The Soul of an Octopus is on four regional independent bestseller lists — #10 in New England, #13 in the Mountains & Plains, #6 in the Pacific Northwest, and #6 in Northern California.

Everyone is reading The Soul of an Octopus. Each year the Howe Library in Hanover, New Hampshire, picks one book for its month-long community event called “Everyone is Reading.” This year it’s all about octopuses in Hanover. In addition to book discussions and talks about the ocean, you can “craft your own octopus” like the handsome yarn octopus seen above.

The Soul of an Octopus is presently swimming about on two New York Times Bestseller Lists for October: It’s at #17 on the Science list and #5 on the Animals list. And it continues on the regional independent bookstore lists: #3 in New England (Watch out Sox!), #1 in the Pacific Northwest, #9 in Northern California and #7 on the Mountains and Plains list.

For the week of September 4, The Soul of an Octopus is on these bestseller lists:

#4 – New England Independent Booksellers Association

#7 – Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association

#5 – New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association

#13 – Midwest Independent Booksellers Association

For summer’s end, The Soul of an Octopus is living large on the bestseller lists. The week of August 31 finds the book at #3 on New England Independent Booksellers Association list, #8 on Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association list, #3 on the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association list, #8 on Southern California Independent Booksellers Association list, and #6 on the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association list.

For the week of August 12, The Soul of an Octopus is on these regional bestseller lists:

#3 – New England Independent Booksellers Association

#9 – Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association

#3 – Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association

#10 – Southern California Independent Booksellers Association

#3 – Northern California Independent Booksellers Association

Beantown is Octo-Town. The Soul of an Octopus is number 3 on the Boston Globe’s Best Seller list for paperback nonfiction. Go Sox!

Sy’s octo book has swum into a new harbor. For the first time it appears on The New York Times Bestseller list of science books. It is at #20 for August. It’s also #5 on The New York Times Animals Bestseller list for August and it’s on these regional bestseller lists for the week of August 14: #6 –New England Independent Booksellers Association, #2 — Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, #3 — Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, and #3 – New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association.

Sy’s friend Sandy Waters sent this Programme of Events of the RMS Queen Elizabeth for Sunday, June 23, 1957, which she bought at an antiques show. The day’s schedule began with optional swimming starting at 7:30 a.m., and included films (Sy would have most enjoyed “Catching Sea Creatures” provided they put them back), Melody Time, BBC News Broadcast, orchestral selections, Bingo — and the night’s gala “Fancy Head-Dress Parade” at 10:30 p.m. followed by dancing. Sounds fancy, but they do all this on Jet Blue, too.

For the week of August 7 The Soul of an Octopus is on these regional bestseller lists:

#4 – New England Independent Booksellers Association

#7 – Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association

#4 – Northern California Independent Booksellers Association

#6 – Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association

Kakapo Rescue inspires a genome project. Andrea Graves, a freelance science writer in New Zealand, recently wrote to Sy to tell her how her book on “the world’s strangest parrot” has “sparked off a wonderful series of events.” Jason Howard, a Duke University scientist, read Sy’s kakapo book to his daughter. Howard is sequencing avian genomes to “study the genetic basis of vocal learning.” After reading Sy’s book, he decided to sequence the Kakapo’s genome, and after much effort, got the samples he needed sent to the U.S.

“New Zealand science and conservation is hugely underfunded, so there is no way we could have afforded that in New Zealand,” writes Graves. “Jason’s decision to sequence the kakapo genome was crucial to it happening.” And it kicked off further research. “Now, via a crowd-funded project, New Zealanders have raised the money to sequence every single living adult kakapo, which is the first time ever that all the individuals in a species have been sequenced. Of course it helps that there aren’t many of them. There are likely to be huge conservation benefits to knowing the full sequence of all individuals, because they are fairly inbred as you can imagine.”

Andrea Graves concludes her note with further good news: There are now about twice as many kakapos on the island than there were when Sy wrote Kakapo Rescue in 2008.