Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures Hardcover – May 12, 2020

I really enjoyed this book. The portion on Lichens (a fascination of mine) was very good, although I wish it was a bit longer. Their were revelations in every chapter, some which were just changes of perspective. For instance, the revelation that mushrooms were just the fruiting bodies of underground fungal colonies brought me up short. That there are fungi that also entrap nematodes for food sometimes, was really eye opening. Also, the permeation of just about every variety of plant by Fungi, and how they even link trees together and help balance the nutrients among stands of trees. Who would have thought? Finally, it's clear that there is a strong influence of Fungi on human beings (for instance, via yeasts and fermentation) was fascinating, and now that I've read this, I see the influence of Fungi everywhere, which I suspect was the point. There were some sections that delved into philosophic and sometimes abstract ideas that didn't quite interest me, but overall this was an excellent book.

I really hate to sound like a fangirl, but I will make an exception for this book. It has been years since I read a book that I was truly sad to finish, but when I turned a page and saw the word "epilogue" at the beginning of the next, I was genuinely bummed knowing I will never get to read this book again for the first time.Is it full of fascinating facts about fungi? Certainly. But it was actually the writing that made reading this book such a joy. Sheldrake's prose is lively and clever, but above all it is richly sensual--something you don't usually find in scientific non-fiction. There is an earthiness and intimacy, even a subtle eroticism, that befits the subject matter, and conjures a sense of vicarious experience. If you didn't think lichens were sexy before, Sheldrake will persuade you.Enmeshed (dare one say like fungal hyphae?) with the bare facts is another, more introspective narrative about Sheldrake's own evolution as a scientist and a person, via his deepening relationship with his subject. Indeed, relationality is a theme that repeatedly emerges in this work; evidently, it is something fungi can teach us a lot about. While many scientists undoubtedly grow through their relationships with their research subjects, in my experience few are reflective enough to realize it, let alone lean into it and write a book about it.Highly recommended for mushroom nerds, fans of fungal medicine, ecologists, animists, and all symbionts alike.

This is a great read - fascinating and insightful.The author educates and entertains with humor and grace. He describes fungi in intimate detail and explains a huge chunk of the microcosm on which we, as humans, depend. If you’re interested in nature, in medicine or just in how things work in the world, you won’t be disappointed.

Interesting as well as scholarly, but could be half as long and still say the same thing. It is not a general book on fungi but on a specific type of fungus that networks with plants. That was not what I was expecting.

I love Merlin‘s writing style. And as a high school senior, this book was both very accessible to somebody with minimal knowledge about the subject and very inspiring for somebody who is thinking about what they want to do with their life. Mycology is super cool the writing style really just blew me away. I love how accessible this book makes science feel especially because it’s very engaging and written in such a way that it’s isn’t just interesting facts but also it expresses the cultural impacts and more human sides of the topic really really well. I’m absolutely obsessed.

In the spirit of books like “Underland” by Robert MacFarlane (which actually features Merlin Sheldrake in his mycological splendor), “Entangled Life,” much like the dwarves arriving at Bilbo’s house, brashly pulls you, the reader, out on a rough-and-tumble adventure that engages the senses like few literary works. You’ll quickly find yourself sweaty, running alongside truffle dogs in the in the Italian countryside, brambles scratching your arms, or as a child, immersed in a giant pile of leaves, the moist scent of decomposition saturating your nostrils as you burrow down to the interface where leaves meet the earth, writhing with worms.In his introduction, using the language of his friend and mentor David Abram, Sheldrake diffracts his narrative through the prism of phenomenology. “Our perceptions work in large part by expectations. It takes less cognitive effort to make sense of the world using preconceived images updated with a small amount of new sensory information than to constantly form entirely new perceptions from scratch…Tricked out of our expectations, we fall back on our senses."On first glance, you might think that this is a book about fungi. And in a way, it is—as much as you might say that an oil painting is about paint and canvas. And yet, just like the painter, Sheldrake uses his medium of mycelium to illustrate not just the qualities of a natural kingdom, but to paint the icon of a new paradigm. In the world of “Entangled Life,” Sheldrake’s portraits dissolve the veil that normally crisply define the thresholds of individual organisms. Given that your corporeal subsistence as a human is reliant on yeasts (a form of fungi), both to maintain your microbiome, and to pre-digests your food, where do you end, and where does the fungal kingdom begin? Given that trees are unable to access the water and nutrients they need to thrive without mycelial networks, is it useful to refer to an individual tree as an organism, or must we expand our definition to include its fungal partners? To use the terminology of J. G. Bennett, maybe even the concept of individuality begins only at the scale of the species.Sheldrake has PhD in ecology, and relies upon a scientific epistemology to construct and buttress his rhetoric. And yet where much of science hones in at the order of mechanism, to the degree that we lose the forrest in the trees, Sheldrake employs science in a way that invites in our somatic selves and leaves us awed by the synergies dancing our eyes and branching beneath our feet.Like the effects of the psilocybin mushrooms which Sheldrake describes, this book can serve as a portal through our drab mental models into the vibrant, bustling, sonorous, and pungent world that has been longing for our attention.