Skip to main content

Entangled Life - How Fungi Make Our Worlds by Merlin Sheldrake: book review

 






Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures (2020) is all about fungi, like mushrooms, yeasts and moulds – they are neither plants, nor animals. 

 

The author begins with what fungi are and how they live their lives – with more than 90% of species undocumented and many of them out of view of humans (and therefore out of mind). From microscopic yeast to a gigantic sprawling network of organisms, fungi can digest rocks and survive unprotected in space. 

 

Fungi spores are everywhere in the air we breathe: ‘Some species discharge spores explosively, which accelerate 10,000 faster than a Space Shuttle directly after launch, reaching speeds of up to a hundred kilometres per hour … [producing] around fifty megatonnes of spores each year – equivalent to the weight of 500,000 blue whales …’ Wow, who knew? 

 

And from fungi mould comes penicillin – a bacteria-killing chemical, the first modern antibiotic that changed the way we heal wounds, treat diseases and psychological illnesses, and save lives. It also gives us bread and alcohol. 

 

They seem to have a directional memory, without having a brain, and can solve problems – for example, the experiment in which, in a soil model of Great Britain, fungi could work out the most efficient routes between cities – faster than a human. The Cardiff University professor, Lynne Boddy, conducting the experiments, said that the fungi mapped out the network of highways: ‘You could see the M5, M4, M1, M6. I thought it was quite fun.’  

 

There is an intriguing discussion about scientists humanising plants and vegetalising people, as a way of describing the ‘entangled life’ of fungi. 

 

From life before plants, to life today, Sheldrake reveals the importance of fungi – in the hope that people take them less for granted, and more for the way they have become entangled in our lives, in a good way. This is an informative, interesting read, rich in facts, and with some quotes, photographs and illustrations too. 

















 

 

MARTINA NICOLLS

MartinaNicollsWebsite

 

Martinasblogs

Publications

Facebook

Paris Website

Animal Website

Flower Website

SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES 


MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pir-E-Kamil - The Perfect Mentor by Umera Ahmed: book review

The Perfect Mentor pbuh  (2011) is set in Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan. The novel commences with Imama Mubeen in medical university. She wants to be an eye specialist. Her parents have arranged for her to marry her first cousin Asjad. Salar Sikander, her neighbour, is 18 years old with an IQ of 150+ and a photographic memory. He has long hair tied in a ponytail. He imbibes alcohol, treats women disrespectfully and is generally a “weird chap” and a rude, belligerent teenager. In the past three years he has tried to commit suicide three times. He tries again. Imama and her brother, Waseem, answer the servant’s call to help Salar. They stop the bleeding from his wrist and save his life. Imama and Asjad have been engaged for three years, because she wants to finish her studies first. Imama is really delaying her marriage to Asjad because she loves Jalal Ansar. She proposes to him and he says yes. But he knows his parents won’t agree, nor will Imama’s parents. That
1 comment
Read more

Flaws in the Glass, a self-portrait by Patrick White: book review

The manuscript, Flaws in the Glass (1981), is Patrick Victor Martindale White’s autobiography. White, born in 1912 in England, migrated to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. For three years, at the age of 20, he studied French and German literature at King’s College at the University of Cambridge in England. Throughout his life, he published 12 novels. In 1957 he won the inaugural Miles Franklin Literary Award for Voss, published in 1956. In 1961, Riders in the Chariot became a best-seller, winning the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 1973, he was the first Australian author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Eye of the Storm, despite many critics describing his works as ‘un-Australian’ and himself as ‘Australia’s most unreadable novelist.’ In 1979, The Twyborn Affair was short-listed for the Booker Prize, but he withdrew it from the competition to give younger writers the opportunity to win the award. His autobiography, Flaws in the Glass
Post a Comment
Read more

The Beggars' Strike by Aminata Sow Fall: book review

The Beggar’sStrike (1979 in French and 1981 in English) is set in an unstated country in West Africa in a city known only as The Capital. Undoubtedly, Senegalese author Sow Fall writes of her own experiences. It was also encapsulated in the 2000 film, Battu , directed by Cheick Oumar Sissoko from Mali. Mour Ndiaye is the Director of the Department of Public Health and Hygiene, with the opportunity of a distinguished and coveted promotion to Vice-President of the Republic. Tourism has declined and the government blames the local beggars in The Capital. Ndiaye must rid the streets of beggars, according to a decree from the Minister. Ndiaye instructs his department to carry out weekly raids. One of the raids leads to the death of lame beggar, Madiabel, who ran into an oncoming vehicle as he tried to escape, leaving two wives and eight children. Soon after, another raid resulted in the death of the old well-loved, comic beggar Papa Gorgui Diop. Enough is enou
8 comments
Read more