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A review by rossbm
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake
2.0
(listened as audiobook)
What's it about?
It's a pop science book about fungus, written by a researcher. It discusses different aspects of fungus, interleaves the author's personal stories along with stories of other fungus enthusiasts, and talks about how fungus how influenced human society/culture.
What did I think?
I mainly thought that the book was too long. It was about 10 hours on audio book. If it had been about half that, it would easily be a 3 star, maybe even 4 star book. I found beginning parts about how fungus spread, finding the shortest distance to food sources to be very interesting. It's cool how researchers have done experiments that have resulted in fungus growing into the shape of real word transit networks by providing the fungus with constraints and incentives that mimic those faced by the transit networks. I recently learned about algorithms for finding the shortest paths in a graph in my Masters course, and it's cool to think that evolution has equipped fungus with similar algorithms. The beginning also discussed how fungus can exert so much force when sprouting mushrooms that it can crack and push through concrete. That's pretty cool.
I didn't find the stories to be too interesting. The part where the author goes truffle hunting was alright; truffles are clearly an important fungus, and it's neat to hear how the dogs are used to find the truffles. A lot of different fungus enthusiasts are described. Some are researches with doctorates, some are self taught. I would have preferred if things had been more concentrated on the science of the fungus, rather than veering into airy discussion about what fungus can teach us about the meaning of life. For example, it makes sense to have a section on magic mushrooms, but too much time was spent on it. I don't think that there was any need to cover Terence Mckenna's talk about a "mushroom god".
Later in the book, I found the talk about using fungus for bioremedation pretty cool. The role that fungus play in the "Wood Wide Web" was interesting.
The author clearly loves fungus. At the very end, he says that he will compost his book so that it sprouts mushrooms, and then eat the mushrooms. All I could think was "Why?"
What's it about?
It's a pop science book about fungus, written by a researcher. It discusses different aspects of fungus, interleaves the author's personal stories along with stories of other fungus enthusiasts, and talks about how fungus how influenced human society/culture.
What did I think?
I mainly thought that the book was too long. It was about 10 hours on audio book. If it had been about half that, it would easily be a 3 star, maybe even 4 star book. I found beginning parts about how fungus spread, finding the shortest distance to food sources to be very interesting. It's cool how researchers have done experiments that have resulted in fungus growing into the shape of real word transit networks by providing the fungus with constraints and incentives that mimic those faced by the transit networks. I recently learned about algorithms for finding the shortest paths in a graph in my Masters course, and it's cool to think that evolution has equipped fungus with similar algorithms. The beginning also discussed how fungus can exert so much force when sprouting mushrooms that it can crack and push through concrete. That's pretty cool.
I didn't find the stories to be too interesting. The part where the author goes truffle hunting was alright; truffles are clearly an important fungus, and it's neat to hear how the dogs are used to find the truffles. A lot of different fungus enthusiasts are described. Some are researches with doctorates, some are self taught. I would have preferred if things had been more concentrated on the science of the fungus, rather than veering into airy discussion about what fungus can teach us about the meaning of life. For example, it makes sense to have a section on magic mushrooms, but too much time was spent on it. I don't think that there was any need to cover Terence Mckenna's talk about a "mushroom god".
Later in the book, I found the talk about using fungus for bioremedation pretty cool. The role that fungus play in the "Wood Wide Web" was interesting.
The author clearly loves fungus. At the very end, he says that he will compost his book so that it sprouts mushrooms, and then eat the mushrooms. All I could think was "Why?"