There are arguments that human consciousness arose from psychedelic fungi. And that the start of human civilization was in pursuit of beer (curtesy of yeast). Whether that’s true or not matters less than the fact that fungi are at the center of everything. They feed the plant we eat, they break down the food we digest, and when we die, they turn us back into soil.

We humans tend to think of ourselves as the smartest around, but fungi are just as smart. We express our intelligence with our actions, but fungi express it with their biology, creating new chemicals through complex mycelial networks. These fascinating organisms can be the solution to so many of our world’s problems.

This book is scientific and philosophic. It makes you think, but not too hard. Theres a strong narrative, but with lots of interesting anecdotes. In the time it’s taken me to finish this book, I’ve gone from an indifferent observer to an aspiring mycophile. Can’t recommend this book enough.
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This is a fascinating journey into the world of fungi and nature at large. I had my favorite chapters, but truly, the whole book entranced me and left me fascinated from one page to the next. Sheldrake writes about the natural world, and fungi more specifically, with such engaging prose that it's impossible not to fall under the spell of this book.

Absolutely recommended for anyone interested in ecology, the environment, and of course fungi. ( )

The weird world of fungi, plant roots and soil. Eye-opening!

What a great book. It explores fungi, their place in the ecosystem, the uses we have made and are making of them and the very real possibility that fungi are the primary movers and shakers of our planet. Plus, a new Saint Francis quote ( well, new to me, obviously) ( )

Incredibly witchy botany nerdery ( )

A magnificent book. Stunning photos accompany a beautiful narrative. The fabulously named Merlin Sheldrake has opened my eyes to an entirely new view of the world. I will definitely read the more detailed, but less beautiful, companion volume later in the year. ( )

I've been trying to come up with an informative review but the words aren't coming today. If you are remotely interested in mycology and want to know how important fungi are in a ecological or biological sense, then I suggest you read this illustrated edition. The photographs are amazing and colorful, plus the added captions are very informative. This isn't a book to rush through. I read a chapter at a time, thought about the message, then moved onto the next topic. It was much more enjoyable to read and hopefully I'll retain some of the information.

“Nor can our immune systems be taken as a measure of individuality, because they are as concerned with managing our relationships with resident microbes, as fighting off external attackers, and appear to have evolved to enable colonisation by microbes rather than prevent it. Where does this leave you? Or perhaps y'all?” ( )

Entangled Life is author Merlin Sheldrake's ode to fungi. Sheldrake's passion for all things fungus is reflected on every page. I can understand why as is turns out to be a fascinating subject. Fungal life is highly complex and touches almost every aspect of our lives whether we know it or not. From growing building materials to creating pharmaceuticals to cleaning up the environment to some species being tasty food and everything in between. I'm glad I read the book.

The most interesting part for me was the environmental aspect. There are species of fungi that will eat/decompose almost everything including used diapers, cigarette butts, plastics, nuclear waste, neurotoxins and even glyphosate. The possibility to naturally clean up toxic spills and other waste utilizing fungus seem endless. I hope this area is given more study and serious consideration as it could change the planet. ( )

I usually like these popular science/ecology books and this was no exception. I think what I mainly took away, though, was that we've only just begun to understand what fungi contribute to the Earth, how they live/work/exist, and how they could be utilized.

It was interesting to learn more about the intelligence of fungi and some of the symbiotic relationships they've developed. I loved the part about slime molds and how they can find the best routes through maps/mazes. I also thought it was interesting that some fungi can break down plastics and other pollutants. There is a lot of potential here. But also, hopefully we don't ruin fungi trying to use them to our benefit. ( )

I loved this book so hard and was converted to all its causes. I want to be growing experimental mushrooms in my basement. I regretted life choices where I could have been studying fungi in cave systems as a career now. But mostly I just existed in a state of wonder reading this book, which is something I think we all need more of.

My experience of this book was undoubtably enhanced by choosing this for a "book read outside" prompt -- so I read this one chapter at a time, mostly in my own backyard, but a few bits in a National Park on vacation. It was a great choice. ( )

A difficult one. There's some interesting stuff but a frustrating amount of the details of how fungi operate and how they interact with the rest of the ecosystem is apparently unknown, or only hinted at here through single experiments and a few individuals suggesting things. There's quite a lot of fluff around people commercialising or evangelising fungi but it's difficult to work out the actual material impact of this stuff, if it has future prospects, if it's a good way to go. It's often pretty explicitly a call for people to "join up" in the quest to unveil the mysteries of fungi, which is cool but often feels a bit unsatisfying.

The biggest theme is it sort of being a manifesto to not just centre fungus more in our understanding of the world but also to "think like a fungus" - decentralised networks, mostly. I feel like I didn't fully grasp his vision, but it is interesting - something he's trying to convey and does a good job of but it's hard to comprehend because it feels like a paradigm shift. There's more to it woven throughout the book that I can't explain well.

There's definitely interesting parts here but although I came away thinking "fungi are cool and interesting as hell" I didn't learn as much as I wanted and wasn't as sold on the fungal future as he wanted. ( )

51. Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our by Merlin Sheldrake
OPD: 2020
format: 363-page ebook from Apple Books
acquired: September 1 read: Sep 2-24 time reading: 13:21, 2.4 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: popular science theme: naturalitsy
about the author: English biologist, born in 1987

Surprisingly engaging. It's well written, despite lots of dense info, and also somehow very human focused. I thought the first chapter was exceptionally well written. After that it gets a little info heavy, and sometimes without clear direction. But it's always interesting and always thorough. Shardlake doesn't just tell you the ways a fungus does and doesn't act similar to a human brain, he goes into the whole theory of anthropomorphizing.

Among the cool stuff and ideas - he likes you to think of a fungal network from the fungal perspective, everywhere at once along its physical path, the fungus connects to many plants, and transporting nutrients to other plants in self-centered sort of trade balances, giving phosphate in exchange for carbon, or whatnot. So, trees of different species connect through fungi entwined with their roots and spreading through the soil, linking to each other and the fungal system in symbiotic ways.

So how to characterize a fungal network that grows here and there, and dies off here and there so that the network persists and exists everywhere at once, but any specific point comes and goes? In one of Sheldrakes's creative imperfect metaphors, he likes it to humans over time. If you tracked yourself over time, you would exist over paths of space, like a growing fungus. (Also, like a fungus, not physical part of us persists throughout our lifetime.)

He also goes into evolutionary ideas, truffles and truffle hunters, the fungi within us, magic mushrooms (psilocybin), the history of the study of fungi, how lichen is not a single animal, but a symbiotic evolved dependency of fungi and algae, and even Isaac Newton's mythic apple tree. (As he puts it, what was "far and away the most likely candidate for the tree that didn't drop the apple that inspired the theory of gravitation."). He goes in depth into three books I have read - [The Mother Tree] by Suzanne Simard (he puts into perspective just how important her work really was in the 1990's), [How to Change Your Mind] by Michael Pollan, and [Braiding Sweetgrass] by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Recommended to anyone looking for a random fun science book.

2023
https://www.librarything.com/topic/351556#8243789 ( )

A really good look and overview of the fascinating world of mycology and fungi. This wide-ranging treaties looked at symbiotic relationships, the relationship of trees, with fungi, the World Wide Web, the natural world, and the economic costs of various different aspects of fungal medicine and pharmacotherapy. This is also helpful for those people that have an interest in ecology, and of course it does pay attention to the forthcoming climate ( )

Fascinating read for this eco-artsy-nerdy-gyal who has been a student of Mycology for some time and was at the Radical Mycology Intensive with Peter McCoy in Brooklyn. ( )

An amazing book that proves the more you know the more you don't know. Mushrooms and fungi play a huge role in all ecosystems and are little understood. A great read but it poses more questions than it answers. More resources need to be spent in understanding them. They could provide answers to many of our environmental problems. ( )

I refuse to eat mushrooms, there is just something strange about them.... And this book just reinforced that 😆. They are closer to animals than plants? Mushrooms are amazing and I feel like there is as much to discover about them as there is to discover in the deep sea. This book is a good length, and full of fascinating information. I think it could have been punched up just a little so it didn't feel like one long chapter. ( )

Very interesting book, read by the author. Discusses the importance of fungi, and current research.

Some chapters were fascinating, while in others the author's digression causes you to lose the thread of the narrative. Then again a few chapters were too scientifically detailed to follow easily. I intend to read the book myself (rather than listen to the audiobook again) to see if that improves the clarity. ( )

I really liked this book. Yes, I studied some mycology at university and I've always been rather fascinated by fungi ...especially by the km of mycelium that run underground, or through leaf litter and through the trunks of trees. Sheldrake has produced a work here that makes mycology really interesting and gives some dimension to the wealth of fungal life in our world. And most people are totally oblivious to fungi and to their importance to our lives. For example, Sheldrake draws attention to the carboniferous age 290-360 million years ago, when forest proliferated across the globe ...but for tens of millions of years the plant matter didn't decompose.......... hence the vast beds of coal in various locations.........because there were no organisms around that could break down lignin...and it was the emergence of the white rot fungi that had the the ability to do this that brought the formation of coal to an end. It also changed the climate because CO2 had been pulled from the atmosphere.....the reverse of the greenhouse effect.....so the world had cooled.
One of the things that I found most fascinating was his descriptions of Lichens. I'd long known that lichens are really a symbiotic relationship between an algae and a fungi but it's been found that lichens are also packed with bacteria and some of the bacteria appear to be necessary for the proper functioning of the organism ...so instead of it being a symbiont with two essential partners it may have three or four or many more organisms participating as a "holobiont". Sheldrake makes the comment that "it is no longer possible to conceive of an organism- humans included- as distinct from the microbial communities they share a body with........Life is nested biomes all the way down." I became quite fascinated by lichens when i lived in NZ. There seem to be so many marvellous lichens there...especially in the misty forests but also in the volcanic areas and hot springs. And Sheldrake points out that they are tough: One species sent into space can survive a dose of radiation six times the standard dose for food steerilization in the US and 12,000 time the lethal dose for humans. Even at double this dose they survived and were able to reproduce and photosynthesise.
Mycelia certainly form large networks and there is speculation that these networks might transmit electrical signals and act like a brain. (They certainly seem to be able to solve simple puzzles like growing towards food ....though I suspect that other explanations like positive feedback might account for much of this).
Of course we have the obligate description of zombie fungus that take over the brain of an ant which then climbs a grass stake to provide optimum conditions for the fungus to spread its spores. This leads into a very extended section about the mind altering substances in various fungi. A lot of attention is given to Psilocybin mushrooms. (Apparently, many fungi produce the hallucinogenic compound ...including many species in Australia. It's not just confined to Mexico). And there are many other fungi with mind-altering properties that rely on other chemicals. In one case with Entermophthora fungo a virus seems to be involved which infects a fly..so the hypothesis is that the fungus uses the virus to manipulate the mind of insects. (Wacky but plausible). A lot of research is taking place into the use of Psilocybin in treatment of psychological situations. In fact, Sheldrake himself undergoes treatment (in the cause of science). It seems that psilocybin works by closing down the default mode network (DMN) in the brain...the kind of schoolmaster unit in the brain.....so shut this down and you let the networks in the brain off the leash. Free to make all sorts of odd connections.
Some interesting statistics about mycorrhizal fungi; they make up between a third and a half of all living matter in the soil and globally the length of mycorrhizal fungi in the top 10 cm of soils around half the width of our galaxy (4.5 x 10 to power of 17 km) but they die and re-grow rapidly...between 10 and 60 times per year so the total length of all this mycelium would exceed the diameter of the known universe (4.8 x 10 to power of 10 for the hyphae).
Sheldrake, has a few little asides with people operating in the Mycology world. Stamets who is a consultant on Star Wars and who hopes to develop a fungal cure to the bee hive virus that is decimating bee hives in many parts of the world. McCoy who is founder of a group called "radical Mycology"....basically individuals who are working on fungal issues independently like crowdsourced science projects.....and many other interesting individuals.
There is a lot in this book and if I came away with one resounding message it would be that we should pay a lot more attention to fungi....they appear to be much more integrated into other living creatures (including humans) but certainly connecting trees and plants together and although usually unnoticed ....they are everywhere and much more active than I was aware. Happy to give this book five stars. I found it absolutely fascinating. ( )

What a fun book to read. Sheldrake is a good writer and he knows a lot of interesting stuff. And he’s a bit of a lovable weirdo. And a good scientist! Also, fungus is very intriguing and an important part of life on earth. I’d recommend this book to anyone who likes natural science who isn’t afraid of a tiny touch of silliness. ( )

I bought this book at an exhibition in Kyoto in late 2022. It’s a lovely collection of the art of Konoshima Okoku though it focuses mainly on his paintings and sketches of animals there were other works in the exhibition (and in the book also). He was clearly influenced by Chinese painters and the work demonstrates this influence. But, I find his animal paintings just superb….. and the book has enlarged a few of the sections within the paintings to give one a closer look at the detail and the technique. There is one painting of cows in a dairy pp40-43 which I just love. I think it was a screen ….. so very long and able to capture both the farmers bringing ib the hay with the cows looking very contented in the dairy. But lovingly captured and delicate colouration. The cover illustration is also screen in the original …. With a small fox in the snow in the middle of a bamboo grove. It appears to be monochrome but apparently there is some green tea colour applied to the bamboo trunks. There is a lovely sense of balance about the whole work with a concentration of the forest and the fox towards the centre and a sparse half moon on the upper right. A lovely work.
I really enjoyed the exhibition (though it was a cold wet day in Kyoto). Also loved the sketch of three artists sketching…… apparently cold and raining? presumably this is Okoku and friends but it demonstrates the sheer hard work that went into achieving the finished paintings. I must confess that I’ve just spent a lot of time with Google translate on this book and been totally confused because it translates Okoku’s name as something completely different and I couldn’t understand who this “Sakuradani Kajima” was that they kept referring to. Assume it’s alternatives for the Kanji.
But really love the paintings and the work. Happy to give this five stars. ( )

It was interesting to hear about pervasive fungi are. And they can "think" in the sense of solving problems like optimal routine. They can also grow incredibly fast and apparently can form networks for distributing nutrients symbiotically to plants. The personal psilocybin anecdotes were a bit fanciful, however. ( )

My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:

https://youtu.be/EbzDcchqG9s

Enjoy! ( )

Everything I never knew I wanted to know about fungi. Sheldrake clearly loves his field of study and he writes about it in an almost poetic manner. I ended up listening to the audio while I read the book physically, and that was an excellent choice, as Sheldrake does a great job narrating the audiobook.

I'm also very much in the market for some solid science fiction featuring fungi. ( )

I felt like a lot of the science was over my head but thoroughly enjoyed it, more fascinated by fungi than ever. ( )

Fascinating book on fungi. It is equal parts philosophical and science. Informative but engaging. Gives me hope that the world will always regenerate, and i am a tiny thing that doesnt matter in the grand scheme of things. Life is powerful and will not die, even when we fade. ( )