A good reference book! I'm happy to have the reference noted in my tablet! They were details that completed more about the knowledge that I had and others that make it more simple to understand.

Another excellent book in the series. I learned alot about mushrooms. I am a big fan of this series and try to keep one either with me or on my Kindle at all times so I have something easy and informative to read should I ever find myself waiting somewhere or bored.

This is a book series I hadn't heard about until I requested this, because I always like learning more about mushrooms. This is one series I'm going to look for more of, and definitely an author I'll be paying attention to in the future. This is a quick little essay of a book, blending folk remedies, cooking instructions for safe foraging, the weirdness of the biology of mushrooms, and a review of selected literature around them. Read through this in an afternoon off, and enjoyed it. Definitely worth your time, especially if you like mushrooms.

This wasn’t one of my favourites in the generally wonderful Object Lessons series, but one’s response to these books is always personal. I found this one too meandering, even too abstruse at times, with some sentences being quite impenetrable. Too disjointed, and I would have preferred a tighter structure. For me there was an overdose of memoir and personal anecdote, and too many metaphorical passages. However, that said, it’s still an informative and often thought-provoking exploration of mushrooms in all their various manifestations, wide-ranging and comprehensive in its approach, and I learnt a lot.

Part memoir, part history and science lessons, with a touch of the theological and philosophical thrown in there, Mushroom is a tasty mycological treat that will enthrall any fungal fans. I truly enjoyed the read!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the Advance copy, all opinions are my own!

This was a really fascinating book. Like all Object Lessons, this is part memoir, part cultural exploration of an object, in this case, a Mushroom, that we see all around us. I enjoyed reading this and think the author's writing style was well-suited to this subject. 4.5 Stars

People like me come to this series for the chance to be reading – if only for a couple of hours – about something they've never read before. They don't come for the ultra-left, none-more-woke pronoun-mangling, and generally they don't care for the autobiography. Here, right from the kick-off, we get all three – but rest assured, the pronoun talk is for a reason, the autobiography lightly and well used, and we begin right up the enjoyment scale with surprisingly engaging content.

First off we're looking at historical thoughts about fungi – how they may seem the lowest of the low in some orderings, but may have been vital to certain religions (here the author claiming more knowledge of Mithraism than some Mithraic temple ruins I've been to are willing to declare we know about), and their appearance out of little surely must have been eye-opening to alchemists.

Unfortunately I found too little to carry on from there – the book being very much in honour of its subject, yet in ways I never presumed it might be. In getting to be so much about what the polymath creator calls "mushroom metaphysics" I was not in the hands of a botanist, or nutritionist, and the foraging expert had been waylaid somewhere. No, I was in a head shop.

Here is the hair shirt worn in apology for mankind's inhumanity, and the hope that respect for the fungi and so on might be remembered from ancient religions and philosophies, in order that capitalism and eco-ignorance be a bit less of an evil, etc etc and so on. Like I say, on topic, but not in ways I sought.

Various reviewers have used words like trippy and academic when describing this book and those are words I’d use. It is definitely both of those.

I love mushrooms— foraging them, photographing them, learning about them, spore printing them…. But I guess I just don’t love reading philosophical ramblings about them.

I found this book excruciatingly boring, I’m sorry to say. It made me feel stupid reading it, as if I weren’t intellectual enough to get it. I’m sure it will be a marvelous fit for some readers but you might want to peek inside first and see if it’s a good fit for you.

I read a temporary digital copy of this book via NetGalley.

A trippy, lyrical non-fiction book that is part memoir and part science textbook about mushrooms. There is a lot of science on mushrooms, but also the long, strange journey that humans and mushrooms have been on together for thousands of years.

So I’ve had mixed results with the Object Lessons series, short books that focus on the hidden history of everyday objects. My introduction was to “Sewer”, a fascinating look at the world beneath our feet. I followed that up with “Burger”, basically an essay against advertising, meat, consumerism – pretty much anti-burger and not at all to my liking. Next came “Blue Jeans”, another great entry about an everyday item that has come to mean so much in this world, easily the best in the series so far.

Which brings us to “Mushroom” by Sara Rich. The pattern seems to say that this will not be one of my favorites, and in this case the pattern is correct. When Ms. Rich writes about mushrooms and their uses (which is only four pages or so in the entire book) it is interesting and right on topic. I also enjoyed her stories about mushroom picking, and how mushrooms have played a role in her life. But unfortunately most of the book dives into mysticism, surrealism, symbolism, philosophy, theology, and many, many more things that I did not understand nor at times really saw how this dealt with mushrooms. Aristotle makes an appearance, along with witches and the claims that mushrooms are (basically) sentient beings.

Too much meandering, too much philosophical musings, too much pseudoscience. It seems that in this series, I enjoy the books that are actually about the subject they are supposed to explain. “Mushroom” stretches that connection. Not for me.

I requested and received a free advanced electronic copy from Bloomsbury Academic via NetGalley. Thank you!

*This book was received as an Advanced Reader's Copy from NetGalley.

This was my first book in the Object Lessons series. I didn't really know what to expect. The description makes it seem as if it takes mundane objects and reveals them in detail. And I guess that's what happened here, but maybe not in the way that I thought it would.

In Mushroom, Rich separates the story of the mushroom into two parts, per season, repeating seasons. The first part usually details some information on a particular mushroom, her experiences foraging it, and maybe some information on preparation/taste. The second part varies wildly; it ultimately looks at the mushroom through sociological/philosophical connotations.

I don't think this book is for the average person going in and reading about mushrooms. Trying to read it out loud was like doing a tongue twister. Lots of pretty, academic words jumbled into a mix. It bounced around so much as well, especially in those second parts. In one minute, we could be talking about nuclear fallout, in the next, the religious tendencies of Stamets. In other ways, the book seemed like a memoir of Rich's experiences. None of this is a bad thing, but again, not what I was expecting in a book presumably about mushrooms.

I will say that it had some nice imagery in it and the artist in me now has a few thoughts for creating. But overall, I'm not sure this was a great introduction into the Object Lesson series, if indeed most are about the objects themselves and less the writer.

Review by M. Reynard 2023

This book is a delight. If this title is anything to go on, I am now eager to learn more about others in the "Object Lessons" series. Each book discusses the hidden lives of an ordinary thing.

This is a deep dive into the mushroom, the physical object, the metaphorical object, the mystery, the magic and the mycology. The exploration is deep and wide. Rich is the kind of gifted writer and scholar that I would love to read on any subject. What an intellectual playground she creates. Mushrooms are looked at from every angle, and topics range from foraging to philosophy, from alchemy to capitalism, from metaphor to witchcraft, from psilocybin to fly agaric. It was a wild ride, and I was utterly transfixed. Highly recommend.

My thanks to the Bloomsbury and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC.

This book is an interesting venture into the world of mushrooms, their secrets and how these organisms fit into our lives and the world we live in. I enjoyed reading this mixture of memoirs, mushroom descriptions and stories, interlaced with frequent ventures into history and philosophy, which albeit intriguing felt a bit too distant from the subject matter at times.

Nevertheless, this book is a good read, providing plenty of learning about the intriguing life of plants, mushrooms and beyond, while tying it all into the writer's personal history and a broader critique of the capitalist system.

I love this series. This book is where mycology, history, esotericism, literary criticism, and sociological discourse meet into one intriguing experience. It is set up a logical fashion with each season followed by the most abundant mushroom species of that particular season. From there, the thread departs into a variety of subjects that left my mind whirling. I was expecting this to have been more focused on individual mushrooms and their context in history and culture. This book was so much more. There some weird tangents that I didn’t jive with, but other than that, it fit in with the series very well.

Thank you, NetGalley!

I've read a lot of these Object Lessons now, and they rarely disappoint. Intriguingly, Mushroom is perhaps the most surprisingly metaphorical of these so far. It's certainly not quite what I expected. There are short sections about specific mushrooms, related to (northern hemisphere) seasons. But the main sections are Mystery, Metaphor, Mycology, Medicine and Magic. All of these things I know relate to mushrooms and the history of their use by humans; there was a bit more emphasis on the metaphor aspect overall than I had anticipated. Which was certainly interesting, just not what I imagined!

Mushrooms are eaten for sustenance, of course, but they have also been used for medical and spiritual and magical purposes. Rich explores all of these, and - as most of these books do - also situates the discussion very personally.

Not quite what I expected, but not something I regret reading.

Mushroom is an interesting foray into mushrooms, philosophy, religion, and the human condition. Told over six chapters, Sarah Rich reviews the uses and history of a number of mushrooms while also exploring their cultural and philosophical properties. The writing style is very rhythmic and easy to read. Mushroom was very informative and got me thinking about the world around me and how everything ties together in ways that I don't usually take the time to think about.

Sara Rich's Mushroom joins the Object Lesson series for an exploration of fungi in their various incarnations both in the natural world and their metaphorical or mystical uses.

In its organization Rich set out to make sure it had a "structured rhythm, not unlike walking... with regularly paced chapters..." (pg 119), and it does live up to this goal. It is divided into six parts, each with their own subsections. Each of those six parts ends with descriptions of a particular mushroom that is harvested in a season, along with how to identify it, its taste and how to cook and store it.

Topic wise, Mushroom discusses the concept of myco-theology, a blending of the environmental or botanical histories, development and functions of the mushroom with a theological beliefs tied to a mushrooms functioning. As mushrooms have survived past extinction events, can they point us to a more sustainable future? If life still exists on earth it is most likely to be fungi.

It gets a bit messy. Aside from this focus, the reader learns a great bit about foraging, where to look for particular mushrooms and dining possibilities. Rich also makes some interesting diversions into more cultural themes such as the mushroom as representative of a phallus or sexuality to the traditional imagery of the Christmas decorations as well as some of the medicinal and recreational usage of mushrooms and some of the compounds in them.

Full of lots of interesting ideas and discussions, for me Mushroom unfortunately doesn't quite cohere into a full work. Much feels left unclear below the surface.

I chose this short book on mushrooms because I've had a long-standing interest in fungi since my microbiology degree. I read Merlin Sheldrake's book Entangled Life last year and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Mushroom by Sara Rich is a more individual exploration of what fungi mean to us, looking at spiritual, culinary, environmental, psychedelic and metaphysical aspects. There were some interesting concepts in the book, but I found much of the text overly sesquipedalian which meant I had to re-read some sections to fully appreciate the meaning. Nevertheless, I can recommend the book for everyone who has even a passing interest in mushrooms.

A rhythmic foray into the world of an inscrutable and wondrous organism. This book goes beyond mushrooms as a pasta ingredient or trendy coffee alternative to present them as the firmament for life as we know it. They are enablers of mystical traditions, menders of minds lost to depression, and symbols of inexplicable growth and excruciating misery. But it acknowledges too, that this firmament only exists because of death and rot. This book is a part of a series, Object Lessons, about hidden lives of ordinary things. The author uses the seasons and describes mushrooms for each season. She says that “if an insect likes a mushroom, humans will too.” I enjoyed this book and know that you will too. I learned a lot about mushrooms and which ones are edible. Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Academic for a copy for an honest review.

This book is an unexpected delight! Sara Rich writes with a style at once personal, profound, philosophic, and real. As the title implies this is a book about mushrooms but it is also so much more - about walking slowly and taking in the world around us. Sara uses the construct of the seasons to convey what mushrooms might be most abundant to forage but also as metaphor for various of life's passages. She draws a map for us to breathe deeply of the living organisms existing just at the Earth's surface, of how they function in the circle of life, death, and rebirth, and reminds us through history and legend of the secrets and mysteries of the forest. This is an elegiac tour to be savored in the same way as one would ones favorite meal, slowly enjoying each bite.

I thank the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me an advanced copy to critique.