Of Octopuses and Men

Of Octopuses and Men

Author: Misha Bell

Publisher: Mozaika Publications

Published: 2022-04-05

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1631427377

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

My grandparents’ grumpy neighbor is as hot as the lethal Florida sun. And like the sun, he’s bad for me. My taste in men is the worst—just ask my ex and his restraining order. What am I doing in Florida with my grandparents, you wonder? Well, my best friend is an octopus, and he needs a bigger tank, so I took a job at an aquarium in the Sunshine State. I didn’t expect that sexy, long-haired grump to try to buy my octopus for some nefarious purpose. Nor did I expect to make out with him during a late-night swim at the beach. And the last thing I expected was to run into him on my first day at my new job… where he’s my boss. NOTE: This is a standalone, raunchy, slow-burn romantic comedy featuring a sun-phobic marine biologist, her scorching hot grump of a boss, and an octopus who likes to go on walks in his mobile tank. If any of the above is not your cup of tea, run far, far away. Otherwise, buckle in for a laugh-out-loud, feel-good ride.


The Soul of an Octopus

The Soul of an Octopus

Author: Sy Montgomery

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-07-12

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1501161148

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction * New York Times Bestseller * A Huffington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the Year * One of the Best Books of the Month on Goodreads * Library Journal Best Sci-Tech Book of the Year * An American Library Association Notable Book of the Year “Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus does for the creature what Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk did for raptors.” —New Statesman, UK “One of the best science books of the year.” —Science Friday, NPR Another New York Times bestseller from the author of The Good Good Pig, this “fascinating…touching…informative…entertaining” (The Daily Beast) book explores the emotional and physical world of the octopus—a surprisingly complex, intelligent, and spirited creature—and the remarkable connections it makes with humans. In pursuit of the wild, solitary, predatory octopus, popular naturalist Sy Montgomery has practiced true immersion journalism. From New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico, she has befriended octopuses with strikingly different personalities—gentle Athena, assertive Octavia, curious Kali, and joyful Karma. Each creature shows her cleverness in myriad ways: escaping enclosures like an orangutan; jetting water to bounce balls; and endlessly tricking companions with multiple “sleights of hand” to get food. Scientists have only recently accepted the intelligence of dogs, birds, and chimpanzees but now are watching octopuses solve problems and are trying to decipher the meaning of the animal’s color-changing techniques. With her “joyful passion for these intelligent and fascinating creatures” (Library Journal Editors’ Spring Pick), Montgomery chronicles the growing appreciation of this mollusk as she tells a unique love story. By turns funny, entertaining, touching, and profound, The Soul of an Octopus reveals what octopuses can teach us about the meeting of two very different minds.


The Benefits of Being an Octopus

The Benefits of Being an Octopus

Author: Ann Braden

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2018-09-18

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1510737529

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Edutopia's "25 Essential Middle School Reads from the Last Decade," NPR Best Book of 2018, Bank Street List for Best Children's Books of 2019, Named to the Vermont Dorothy Canfield Fisher List, Maine's Student Book Award List, Louisiana Young Reader's Choice Award List, Rhode Island Middle School Book Award 2020 List, 2020 Oklahoma Sequoyah Book Award Nominee, 2021 South Carolina Junior Book Award Nominee, 2020-2021 Truman Award​ (Missouri) Nominee, Middle School Virginia Readers’ Choice Titles for 2020–2021​, Charlie May Simon Award 2020–2021 List, South Carolina Book Awards Nominee, 2020–2021, and 2023 Rebecca Caudill Young Readers Book Award nominee​. Some people can do their homework. Some people get to have crushes on boys. Some people have other things they've got to do. Seventh-grader Zoey has her hands full as she takes care of her much younger siblings after school every day while her mom works her shift at the pizza parlor. Not that her mom seems to appreciate it. At least there's Lenny, her mom's boyfriend—they all get to live in his nice, clean trailer. At school, Zoey tries to stay under the radar. Her only friend Fuchsia has her own issues, and since they're in an entirely different world than the rich kids, it's best if no one notices them. Zoey thinks how much easier everything would be if she were an octopus: eight arms to do eight things at once. Incredible camouflage ability and steady, unblinking vision. Powerful protective defenses. Unfortunately, she's not totally invisible, and one of her teachers forces her to join the debate club. Even though Zoey resists participating, debate ultimately leads her to see things in a new way: her mom’s relationship with Lenny, Fuchsia's situation, and her own place in this town of people who think they're better than her. Can Zoey find the courage to speak up, even if it means risking the most stable home she's ever had? This moving debut novel explores the cultural divides around class and the gun debate through the eyes of one girl, living on the edges of society, trying to find her way forward.


Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life

Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life

Author: Peter Godfrey-Smith

Publisher: HarperCollins UK

Published: 2017-03-09

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0008226288

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

BBC R4 Book of the Week ‘Brilliant’ Guardian ‘Fascinating and often delightful’ The Times What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?


Violet the Hugging Octopus

Violet the Hugging Octopus

Author: Sherry Duquet

Publisher: DP Kids Press

Published: 2019-01-15

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13: 9781937801922

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Children learn self-love and self-pride in a cute and cuddly sea creature adventure.


Life Before Man

Life Before Man

Author: Margaret Atwood

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-03-27

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1451686870

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From the author of the New York Times bestselling novels The Handmaid’s Tale—now an Emmy Award-winning Hulu original series—and Alias Grace, now a Netflix original series. Imprisoned by walls of their own construction, here are three people, each in midlife, in midcrisis, forced to make choices--after the rules have changed. Elizabeth, with her controlled sensuality, her suppressed rage, is married to the wrong man. She has just lost her latest lover to suicide. Nate, her gentle, indecisive husband, is planning to leave her for Lesje, a perennial innocent who prefers dinosaurs to men. Hanging over them all is the ghost of Elizabeth's dead lover...and the dizzying threat of three lives careening inevitably toward the same climax.


Octopus!

Octopus!

Author: Katherine Harmon Courage

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2014-11-25

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1617230146

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“A pleasant, chatty book on a fascinating subject.” — Kirkus Reviews Octopuses have been captivating humans for as long as we have been catching them. Yet for all of our ancient fascination and modern research, we still have not been able to get a firm grasp on these enigmatic creatures. Katherine Harmon Courage dives into the mystifying underwater world of the octopus and reports on her research around the world. She reveals, for instance, that the oldest known octopus lived before the first dinosaurs; that two thirds of an octopus’s brain capacity is spread throughout its arms, meaning each literally has a mind of its own; and that it can change colors within milliseconds to camouflage itself, yet appears to be colorblind.


Ocean Bestiary

Ocean Bestiary

Author: Richard J. King

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2023-05-26

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0226825809

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A delightful A-to-Z menagerie of the sea—whimsically illustrated, authoritative, and thought-provoking. For millennia, we have taken to the waves. And yet, for humans, the ocean remains our planet’s most inaccessible region, the place about which we know the least. From A to Z, abalone to zooplankton, and through both text and original illustrations, Ocean Bestiary is a celebration of our ongoing quest to know the sea and its creatures. Focusing on individual species or groups of animals, Richard J. King embarks upon a global tour of ocean wildlife, including beluga whales, flying fish, green turtles, mako sharks, noddies, right whales, sea cows (as well as sea lions, sea otters, and sea pickles), skipjack tuna, swordfish, tropicbirds, walrus, and yellow-bellied sea snakes. But more than this, King connects the natural history of ocean animals to the experiences of people out at sea and along the world’s coastlines. From firsthand accounts passed down by the earliest Polynesian navigators to observations from Wampanoag clamshell artists, African-American whalemen, Korean female divers (or haenyeo), and today’s pilots of deep-sea submersibles—and even to imaginary sea expeditions launched through poems, novels, and paintings—Ocean Bestiary weaves together a diverse array of human voices underrepresented in environmental history to tell the larger story of our relationship with the sea. Sometimes funny, sometimes alarming, but always compelling, King’s vignettes reveal both how our perceptions of the sea have changed for the better and how far we still have to go on our voyage.


Shells on a Desert Shore

Shells on a Desert Shore

Author: Cathy Moser Marlett

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2014-06-12

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 081654512X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Mexico’s western Sonoran Desert along the Gulf of California is a place made extraordinary by the desert solitude, the dynamic sea, and the people who live there—the Seris. Central to the lives of these people are the sea and its shores. Shells on a Desert Shore describes the Seri knowledge of mollusks and includes names, folklore, history, uses, and much more. Cathy Moser Marlett’s research of several decades, conducted in the Seri language, builds on work begun in 1951 by her parents, Edward and Becky Moser. The language, spoken by fewer than a thousand people today, is considered endangered. Marlett presents what she has learned from Seri consultants over recent decades and also draws from her own childhood experiences while living in a Seri village. The information from the people who had lived as hunter-gatherers provides a window into a lifestyle no longer recalled from personal experience by most Seris today—and perhaps a window into the lives of other peoples who made the Gulf’s shores their home. The book offers a wealth of information about Seri history, as well as species accounts of more than 150 mollusks from the Seri area on the central Gulf coast. Chapters describe how the people ate mollusks or used them medicinally, how the mollusks were named, and how their shells were used. The author provides several hundred detailed drawings and photographs, many of them archival. Shells on a Desert Shore is a fresh, original presentation of a significant part of the Seri way of life. Unique because it is written from the perspective of a participant in the Seri culture, the book will stand as a definitive, irreplaceable work in ethnography, a time capsule of the Seri people and their connection to the sea.


Secrets of the Octopus

Secrets of the Octopus

Author: Sy Montgomery

Publisher: Disney Electronic Content

Published: 2024-03-19

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 1426224230

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Remarkable new discoveries affirm the octopus as one of nature’s most intelligent and complex animals. This new book—written by the beloved author of the international bestseller The Soul of an Octopus and enhanced with vivid National Geographic photography—brings us closer than ever to these elusive creatures. The companion to the highly-anticipated National Geographic television special, this beautifully illustrated book explores the alluring underwater world of the octopus—a creature that resembles an alien lifeform, but whose behavior has earned it a reputation as one of the most intelligent animals on the planet. This magical journey into the world of the octopus will reveal how the large and capable brain of these creatures occupies their whole body–not just their heads—and they can actually adjust their genetic makeup to respond to the demands of the environment. It will allow readers to watch them change shape and color in order to camouflage themselves more effectively than any other species. And it will divulge how octopus mothers give their all in order to bring forth a new generation. With this offering, acclaimed author Sy Montgomery—known, thanks to her bestselling book, as the “octopus whisperer”—returns to the species she knows and loves, offering current and compassionate stories about the scientists on the front lines of octopus research and conservation. For all animal lovers—and especially those drawn to this magical marine being—this will be a book to relish, for both its fascinating imagery and its charming storytelling.