There’s more to an octopus than just its eight tentacles.
The 2026 One Book One Community selection proves it.
In The Soul of an Octopus, author Sy Montgomery explores the emotional and physical world of the octopus — a surprisingly complex, intelligent, and spirited creature — and the remarkable connections it makes with humans.
Starting November 3, copies of the book will be on sale at the Main and Branch locations for $10 a copy, which includes tax. Copies are also available for checkout with a valid RPL card. A list of programs leading up to the author’s visit in late March will be released at a later date.
Montgomery recounts her friendships with several octopuses in the book, which was a 2015 finalist for the National Book Awards. She explores their almost alien intelligence, one that is of the Earth but so different from our mammalian and human consciousness that it might not be out of place on another world.
Practicing true immersion journalism, Montgomery journeys from the New England Aquarium to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico in pursuit of these wild, solitary, predatory mollusks. It’s an underwater adventure story but also the story of relationships that are forged within the community of people that arises from their mutual care for the octopuses. Each octopus turns out to have a distinct personality, and each becomes the central character in her own drama, like a character in a Jane Austen novel. By turns, the story is funny, entertaining, touching, and profound, as it reveals what octopuses can teach us about the meeting of two very different minds.
Montgomery has authored 38 books for both adults and children about different animal species and has been called “one of the finest chroniclers of the natural world” by the New York Times.
She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, the writer Howard Mansfield, and their border collie Thurber.