Books worth reading #20: 'Entangled Life' by Merlin Sheldrake

This is an amazing book. I read Paul Stamets' groundbreaking book Mycellium Running last year. He's the guy who first popularised the discovery that fungal networks under the ground are responsible for trees and other plants being able to communicate and to share nutrients (they even named a character in Star Trek: Discovery after him when they invented a kind of sub-spacial network of wormholes that perform a similar function). 

Merlin Sheldrake's fantastic book tells much the same story but he does so beautifully. He's an exceptional writer and the prose is wonderful.

As the blurb says: 

'When we think of fungi, we probably think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that support and sustain nearly all living systems. The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them. 

Sheldrake’s mind-bending journey into this hidden world ranges from yeast to psychedelics, to the fungi that sprawl for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet, to those that link plants together in complex networks known as the ‘Wood Wide Web’, to those that infiltrate and manipulate insect bodies with devastating precision. Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. 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.'

If you read no other book this year, read this one.