Publisher’s write-up:
‘The more we
learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them. They can change our
minds, heal our bodies and even help us avoid environmental disaster; they are
metabolic masters, earth-makers and key players in most of nature's processes.
In Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake takes us on a mind-altering journey into
their spectacular world, and reveals how these extraordinary organisms
transform our understanding of our planet and life itself.’
Fungi are ever
present – be it in the mushrooms we eat or the moulds that we find in bread or
furniture. However, the argument made by the biologist Merlin Sheldrake in his
book Entangled Life as to how fungi make our worlds and could even shape
the future.
Fungi are in a
unique position between the plant and animal kingdoms, and towards the end of
the book, the author even evokes the question as to whether it is reasonable to
categorise all fungi under one category, which could be inappropriate (akin to
how not all animals in the water are ‘fish’). The author starts with the
phenomenon of lichens, the symbiosis between an algae and a fungi and how they
have eventually helped in taking organisms from sea to the land. Equally, he
also talks about intelligence of certain fungi and the networks that they
create, which could be as complex as that of the map of the Tokyo underground
metro. He also talks about humans’ relationship with fungi, be it consuming
mushrooms, using yeast for fermentation or enjoying truffles. The book
The first four
chapters were insightful as well as interesting – I learnt a lot of new things
about fungi, given there are several words that I saw in this book that I had
never used after middle school biology. The book was also well researched,
given how the citations and notes were almost as long as the content in itself.
Having said
that, I felt that was also a problem of this book, given how I felt that till
the fourth chapter, it targeted at a general audience but after that, the level
of technical language in this book was significantly elevated that I was no
longer able to connect. I was still able to get a broad idea of what the author
was trying to express, but could not go into details. Moreover, given that I
presume the author wrote it for a general audience than members of his own
community of biologists, I would have preferred some amount of writing on the
regular mushrooms that we consume en masse over and above the detailed
discussions on several fancy fungi that the author had discussed.
To conclude, I would say that this is a book that could be enjoyed a lot
by people who have a background in the subject, to the rest, you can get a
broad idea of what the author is talking about, but name-dropping several
technical terms without much explanation or citing names of scientists without
much explanation on what those scientists had done – was difficult to follow
(often redirected to research papers in the notes). I came out knowing more
about our world having read this book and that could make a case to say that
this book was interesting, but at the same time, owing to the writer’s
presentation, it also made it boring and a difficult read. On that note, I
would award the book a rating of five on ten.
Rating – 5/10
Have a nice day,
Andy
No comments:
Post a Comment