This book probably wins this month’s award for “book that I immediately needed to share a fact from;” the family got many earfuls of fascinating mycological trivia. Fungi are not only ubiquitous, an invisible network reaching throughout our world, they are also constantly affecting things, feeding nutrients to plants, changing the brain chemistry of insects and animals (including humans), bubbling and fermenting in our food, digesting things that we’d never think possible, and surviving in incredibly challenging environments. Biologist Sheldrake throws himself entirely into learning more about fungi, not just through research and experimentation, but also by literally inserting himself into his subject (or consuming it). Despite their ubiquity fungi are not entirely understood; clearly some internal communication is at work within the fungus to allow it to reach in the direction of resources, while pruning back spread branches that did not find food; however, as Sheldrake acknowledges, any effort to understand it is limited by our human modes of understanding (Can fungi hunting for resources be said to be “reaching” out? Is it “deciding” which direction to move? Is it “playing favorites” by supplying some plants with nutrients while neglecting others? Have we just stumbled upon fungal properties (yeast!) beneficial to us, or did we evolve into mutual benefit?) Also I had no idea that plants were so bound up with fungi to exist; entire mycelial networks of resource-harvesting and -sharing underlay the ecological landscape that we see outside. My house plants, struggling in their little pots, look so lonely now.