Entangled Life

I thought the weirdness of fungi would be more intriguing. More than anything, the book illustrates our vast lack of knowledge about fungi. Not for me.

DNF at about 20%. The writing was good, but I didn't find myself eager to pick this back up, and it was due back at the library.

This book is fantastic. You think you're getting a book on fungi, and you are, you really, really are, but the author has necessarily connected the world of fungi to our lives as humans, to plants (which are all but inseparable from fungi, as you will learn, yet overshadow them), and to the environment and past and future of the planet. While reading this I kept telling my family interesting facts I'd learned; I couldn't help myself. You walk away from this book with a new, more complete perspective on the natural world. As a bonus, the author has the best name. Imagine: this book on your shelf, covered in beautiful illustrations of fungi, authored by one Merlin Sheldrake. What more could you want??

This book made me cry. Not just about mushrooms, but about this beautiful planet and it's complexity, as well as about humans, whom I struggle to love sometimes, but who's dedication and love of nature is wonderfully illustrated in this. Thank you Merlin.

this book was very interesting in some parts especially with the lichen chapter, the mental health benefits of LSD, and the challenging belief that humans are the end-all-be-all of life. However, I found that some points of the book I didn't get all the science-y words and phrases and couldn't keep up with scientists' names. A good read though to learn more about interconnections of the world.

A good tour of some of the ways fungi are shaping us, whether those avenues are medical, culinary, or even social. The writing is entirely accessible and the personal narrative weaving its way through gives it life and brings the sometimes disparate topics together into a cohesive book. 
I have learned and thought a lot because of this book. The author seems like an intriguing personality. 
In spite of these favourable views, I did still find myself thinking about whether certain things were repeated too often, and I did miss the presence of some kind of mycological scientific primer.

Funny the difference a word makes.

Restaurants generally don't advertise “fungi” on their menus.

But “mushrooms” and “truffles” are a different story. Even though they are the same thing.

Which leads me to a book that took me out of the animal kingdom and into the fungi kingdom, a far more populous and less understood kingdom and one upon which the plant and animal kingdoms depend upon for their (our) survival.

In this amazingly thought-provoking book, author Merlin Sheldrake guides us around this strange kingdom, getting to know a number of fungi species.

Fungi are decentralized organisms, with no heads, nor hearts but the uncanny ability to successfully navigate mazes and punch their ways through pavement. Some glow in the dark. Others emerge from the earth periodically in the form of mushrooms, the fruiting bodies that we humans prize.

Reading this book will make you question the nature of intelligence, for many of the accomplishments of these nearly invisible creatures is hard to comprehend. Sheldrake writes:

Biological realities are never black-and-white. Why should the stories and metaphors we use to make sense of the world–our investigative tools–be so? Might we be able to expand some of our concepts, such that speaking might not always require a mouth, hearing might not always require ears, and interpreting might now always require a nervous system? Are we able to do this without smothering other life-forms with prejudice and innuendo?

Sheldrake takes us along with truffle hunters in Europe and Oregon, relying on the noses of dogs to sniff out truffles, which have evolved scents intended to attract, well, strong-nosed animals. Animals, and, yes, even pigs, eat truffles and spread them to new locations by way of poop.

We learn about how so many of our modern medicines are created by fungus, including the increasingly popular psilocybins. And I did not realize the extent to which our ancestors enjoyed the occasional magic mushroom.

And while fungi are small, they work together in ways that blur the divide between singular and plural. The largest fungi, in the Malheur National Forest, stretches for more than 2,000 acres, making the largest living organism on the planet.

Fungi is the connective tissue of soil. It lives on us, within us and we could not live without it.

But we're also doing a pretty good job of trying to kill it — by way of dumping poisons into the soil in the name of fertilizer and pesticide. Sheldrake writes:

Mycorrhizal fungi increase the volume of water that the soil can absorb, reducing the quantity of nutrients leached out of the soil by rainfall by as much as fifty percent. Of the carbon that is found in soils–which, remarkably, amounts to twice the amount of carbon found in plants and the atmosphere combined–a substantial proportion is bound up in tough organic compounds produced by mycorrhizal fungi ... Besides the hundreds or thousands of meters of fungal mycelium in a teaspoon of healthy soil, there are more bacteria, protists, insects, and arthropods than the number of humans who have ever lived on earth.

If we humans wish to stick around on earth we had better become better stewards of the soil and the fungi holding our world together. If you want to expand your mind — without magic mushrooms — I highly recommend reading Entangled Life.


NOTE: This review first appeared at EcoLitBooks.com.

Fun book that discusses just how amazing fungi are in particular and nature is in general. Read by the author and they did a great job. Recommended for sure.

This book is a brilliant choice if you want to pick up non-fiction that still feels fun. It's accessible, full on interesting facts and written in a pleasant way by a person who sounds cool.

Some people are incredibly odd in a great way. You know, like the people you randomly meet and then, you don't even know how, end up listening to blabbering about some totally unexpected topic AND they make you interested, even though you have no idea you could be.
This is what it feels like reading the writing of Merlin Sheldrake.
This book isn't dry at all, he has a lot of weird charisma about him.

I expected this book to be mainly about mushrooms that humans consume, and a bunch of it was. From truffle hunting to magic mushrooms, yeast that makes bread and alcohol.
But also a bunch of ways in which fungi communicate, breed, exist with other plants and animals. Ways in which they can be used to make compostable packaging and cure bees.
In that way, it felt almost short. I wanted to know more, I wanted to hear more from this person and his odd obsession with running around in a jungle. Making cider in a dorm room.

So while it was a lot of scientific information, it never felt too much or suffocating. It kept me interested and a lot of it was unexpected. This is the enjoyable way to learn. I have already recommended it to multiple people in my life and I will continue to do so.

Any book that helps me keep my bees alive is a winner. I was struggling for a bit to want to pick this up, mostly because I had read a lot of nonfiction this year, but once the author starting talking animal behavior I was hooked. It's like a huge chunk of it was written specifically for me. Fungi are fascinating though and I think this book taught me a lot and scared the crap out of me as well.

There just wasn't enough here to keep my interest.

This is without a doubt the best read in a while and I recommend this to anyone with a bit of interest in nature. It's great because of three things. First, it's a great introduction into the little-known but perhaps most important organisms on our planet: fungi. You can't imagine how incredibly interesting this stuff is. Second, it relates the complexity and systemic nature to so many other parts of our lives and the world that surrounds us. And third, it is incredibly well written. Great use of language, great anecdotes. Fantastic!

A beautifully narrated book about the interconnectedness of our natural world, through the lens of mycology. As unbiased a book as one can be about the sometimes somewhat tenuous subject.

Never even thought about fungi until I read this book. Only now are they starting to be recognised as something distinct from plants. And they seem to have this amazing ability to cooperate with other life forms. Google “fungus zombie ants” for one of the most amazing examples of what fungi can do. Not really a full book length of material in this book but mostly entertaining nonetheless.

I love science poetry and this it it. Full of facts but a pleasure to read.

This is sort of a combination memoir/scientific review about fungi and the ways they relate to other organisms. I found it really interesting but it does ramble in places and a few of the people quoted are kind of questionable to me. Overall recommend it if you're interested in pop-science books though.

If you go with the flow of not remembering which latin term or name refers to what, you can still be amazed at what you can learn. I especially liked chapter 7 and the fungal computer chips.

mushrooms are so fuxking rad damn

I feel forlorn. There I was, two-thirds in, savoring every page, when suddenly: Epilogue. (The rest are endnotes. They look tantalizing, but I wish I'd known about them up front). Anyhow, I was enjoying it so so much and was not ready for it to end. I hope you'll be better prepared.

If you've been following the exciting work on mycorrhizal systems; if you loved Fantastic Fungi; if relationships (among humans and all living creatures) fascinate you – you will likely enjoy this book. If you ever ponder the illusion of Self, or marvel at our Earth – you will learn from this book and love the process.