A review by nmcannon
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures was an impulse purchase from the town conservatory. Fungi is a newer passion of mine, and Sheldrake’s work gave a deeper, more tangled knowledge base. It sparked much joy.

Primarily, the book is a great overview of mycology and the use of mushrooms in the USA today, with the possibilities for the future study. Sheldrake answered basics (like defining a mycelium network and studying yeast and lichen) and slowly moved to more complex topics (like academia’s reluctance to study fungi formally, replacing plastic with fungal “plastic”). The blurb really hits the nail on the head: “By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms—and our relationships with them—are changing our understanding of how life works.”

Unlike with some other nonfiction I’ve been reading, Sheldrake never lost me. I understood each point of his arguments and explanations. I kept having to put the book down, not because it was uninteresting or bad, but because it kept blowing my mind. Breathers were necessary to allow my mind time to expand. Sheldrake repeatedly reminds readers to not attribute peronshood to mycelium–they are not human, or economic systems, or proof that the concept of an individual is totally bullshit. But! It makes ya think. Sheldrake weaves in many literary references mostly deftly, and it made the book much more accessible to readers like me whose last biology class was twenty years ago. There’s a bit about stealing Isaac Newton’s apples that was unnecessarily hostile, but Sheldrake’s storytelling was overall solid.

Entangled Fungi is an amazing book. I love it. I’m so glad I own it, so I can dip into it again and again. If you’re interested in mushrooms, fungi, and mycelium at all, it’s a must read.