JThe Soul of an Octopus has won the 2016 New England Book Award for Nonfiction. Sy thanks the members of the New England Independent Booksellers Association for choosing her book.
For the week of July 17 The Soul of an Octopus is on these regional bestseller lists:
#3 – New England Independent Booksellers Association
#6 – Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association
#12 – Southern California Independent Booksellers Alliance
#4 – Northern California Independent Booksellers Association
#8 – New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association
For the fourth month The Soul of an Octopus is on the New York Times Animals Best Seller list. It has moved up to #5 on the July list.
When Sy read at The Meetinghouse Readings in Canaan, NH, moderator Phil Pochoda introduced her. Phil is a retired publishing veteran (Simon & Schuster, Prentice Hall Press, Pantheon Books, University of Michigan Press, and the University Press of New England, where he edited two books written by Sy’s husband, Howard Mansfield.)
Phil welcomed Sy with this introduction:
We are lucky tonight to have, in New Hampshire resident Sy Montgomery, thephil-pochoda only shaman that I know of, and certainly the only one I know personally. Sy, as shamans do, roves the earth relentlessly: there have been sightings of her from the Caribbean to Sunderbans (a non-mythical place, which hovers somewhere between India and Bangladesh, and where non-mythical tigers regularly hunt non-mythical humans) with lengthy touch-downs also in Cambodia, the Amazon, Tahiti, New Guinea, Mongolia, and Manitoba. On her journeys she communes at length with birds, mammals, and sea creatures — surreal ones such as pink dolphins, ground-dwelling Kakapo parrots, golden moon bears, giant tarantulas, white sharks, tree kangaroos, snow leopards, and the giant Cassowary bird, and, as we will hear much about tonight, octopuses (not octopii), but she is equally tight with domestic animals such as pigs, chickens, and cockatoos.
Happily for us, she does return to New Hampshire after each shamanic adventure, where in book after book, article after article, she tenderly, beautifully, and passionately relates these transforming and transcendent experiences at so many human/animal interfaces. And so sitting safely in our homes, we and our children and grandchildren get at least a second-hand version of her miraculous shamanic border crossings, enabling us also, if we consent, to be transported out of our normal bodies into truly magical realms where we too may be deeply affected and our attitudes and actions towards animals permanently altered….
I’m so pleased to welcome back to the Meetinghouse, our neighbor, our friend, our shaman, Sy Montgomery.
For the week of July 10 The Soul of an Octopus is on these regional bestseller lists:
#5 – New England Independent Booksellers Association
#10 – Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association
#9 – Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association
#4 – Northern California Independent Booksellers Association
A view from Sy’s trip to the Serengeti where she followed wildebeest on their migration, which is the largest migration on earth. Here Dr. Dick Estes, who has been studying wildebeests for more than 55 years, surveys the herd.
Octopus Obsession: A Quilted Book Review Cathy Perlmutter was, she says, “born with a desperate need to make stuff.” She makes “mostly quilts” and shows her wonderful quilts on her blog Geflitequilt. Her most recent quilts are her first book review. “A few weeks ago, I picked up the new book, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness, by Sy Montgomery, and could not put it down,” she writes. Above and below are Cathy’s two octo quilts. On her blog you can learn how to make these quilts. She concludes her quilted book review: “Read the Sy Montgomery book. You’ll love it!”
The Soul of an Octopus is a finalist for the New England Book Awards. Members of the New England Independent Booksellers Association will announce the winners later this summer.
Birdology has gone back to press for a new printing.