Book Recommendations for Octopus Fans

Books I read about cephalopods in the past year.

Feb 14, 2025

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Book Art by Laura Bray copyright 2020

I have a friend who loves octopuses. When you visit her lovely house, you will find them sprinkled throughout the space, from the wall hangings to rugs. It’s all done amazingly well and you don’t really realize that you are in a temple to the creatures unless you know her well enough to know about her love of those eight-legged lovelies.

So maybe it was her that I was I thinking about when I went on a reading bender of books which featured octopuses? Or maybe it was just that there seemed to be sudden influx of books about them and I slipped right in to the pool. Here are my favorite octopus books.

The Memory of Animals

The first book I read about octopuses was The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller. I am a huge Claire Fuller fan, Bitter Orange and Unsettled Ground are my favorites, so when this came out, I couldn’t wait to read it.

The Memory of Animals is a plague book. Not “our” plague, but a future plague. In interviews, Fuller claims she started the idea of the book in September 2019 but, ultimately, it is a story that is eerily similar to the pandemic we recently lived through so be warned, it can be triggering.

A young biologist volunteers to be a test subject for a vaccine for the plague that is ravaging the world and, during the testing, she flashes back to the past, via a memory machine and in the letters she writes to an octopus named H.

While it isn’t my favorite book by Claire Fuller, it was an interesting read.

Remarkably Bright Creatures

Once I began my mollusk journey, it wouldn’t have been complete without reading Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.

It’s another story about the relationship between a woman and an octopus. This one felt a bit more hopeful. It is the story of a lonely, older woman who cleans an aquarium each night, an escape-artist octopus, and a disenfranchised young man whose paths cross creating life changing results for all of them. It is a bittersweet book.

What I find so interesting is that both this book and The Memory of Animals have titles, themes, and symbology that link humans and octopuses. The animals are us. We are the remarkably bright creatures.

The Soul of An Octopus by Sy Montgomery

After reading the above choices, I was thoroughly hooked on octopuses and turned towards nonfiction. Sy Montgomery’s Soul of an Octopus is scientific storytelling at its best. Part science facts, part memoir, I felt like I was falling in love with cephalopods right beside Montgomery. The book inspired me to add a life goal to my bucket list to visit an aquarium that allows octopus encounters with the hopes that one day I might make a connection with these intensely intelligent creatures.

Giant Pacific Octopus at the Oregon Coast Aquarium

Other recommendations:

I haven’t read these but they are on my To Be Read lists!

The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight (fiction)

Watch My Octopus Teacher on Netflix

From the Check-Out Desk

Happy Valentine’s Day! We had a some snow and wind and freezing rain over the past few days and I woke up to a winter wonderland. Here’s the view from my writing room window:

I have a good excuse to stay in today as I live on a hill and getting my car down it would be next to impossible. So I am planning to read and maybe do some baking for my Valentine. Later, my husband will come down and make us a steak dinner while I sit at the counter in the kitchen with a glass of wine and we listen to Ella Fitzgerald. It is the perfect way to celebrate the day.

In our youth, we went to restaurants but over the 30+ years of our relationship, we’ve come to realize that we can make a far better meal than the overcrowded restaurants can. (Reading Anthony Bourdain’s memoir, Kitchen Confidential also helped us decide against going to restaurants on busy nights. Yuck!)

I am sending love to you today. Stay cozy and warm.