Comment by emschwartz

3 days ago

If you haven’t read Entangled Life: How Fungi Shape Our World, I can’t recommend it enough.

https://www.merlinsheldrake.com/entangled-life

Couldn’t agree more. And for what it’s worth, its aptly-named author Merlin Sheldrake is an absolutely charming human too. As quirky iconoclastic woodland enthusiasts go.

For a taste, Joanna Steinhardt for the LA Review:

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-mycophiles-plea-on-m...

I suspect some folks here might also appreciate his early-career (2011) musical collaboration with brother Cosmo Sheldrake and friends, as the Gentle Mystics:

https://gentlemystics.bandcamp.com/album/gentle-mystics

  • Cosmo is his brother, wow! (have deeply adored his solo work since discovering it last year)

    Aaah, it all connects - a web within a web indeed...

    I have got some weekend reading and listening to get to now - thank you all kindly. As a contribution wanted to mention Paul Stamets and his works - it's all somehow about fungi (and bees sometimes!), and all deeply fascinating

As someone who's read a lot of pop sci on this topic as well as published research I went into this book expecting the tropes I've become very familiar with. Merlin Sheldrake actually brought some refreshing and unique takes and I walked away actually learning some new things. It's become my goto introductory book to get people interested in the world of fungi