Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms

[Tom]

I saw this at the BCPL and picked it up because of the title and beautiful pictures on fungi on the cover. It's the story of a food writer who tastes wild mushrooms and decides she has to learn to collect them herself. She joins a local organization and finds there is a whole community of fungi lovers, most of whom are also collectors and consumers. As she gets more and more into it she goes to various mushroom foray's (identification, collection, and often consumption sessions) and festivals across the country. She also finds to be a better collector one has to think like a fungi - or at least understand what they are and how they grow. She ends up the president of the New York Mycological Society.

The book is definitely about a foodie and other fungi lovers (mycophiles). She was a journalist and a writer for food magazines before she went fungi crazy. I could have used a more about fungi ecology and less about the people who love consuming fungi and their stories, but I don't really like eating mushrooms, just looking at them. Her writing style is lively and entertaining and the experiences and characters she describes in their pursuit of fungi are unique and often quite humorous. Apparently, mycophilia can become an overwhelming obsession.

It was worth the read and I wonder about her poor husband. There's a lot of discussion of particular types of mushrooms, commercial production, wild collecting and collectors and praise for fungi and their ecological role. It is fairly recent (2011) so has some of the newer research. These include new findings in where fungi fits in the kingdoms of life, fungi genetics and even new uses being explored for fungi (including bio-remediation of pollution and custom, "green" packaging materials. Some of the facts I learned where fungi are more closely related to animals than plants and many mushrooms form as small nodules with every cell that will be part of the mushroom in place and just waiting for the right conditions and enough moisture to erupt.

I believe mushroom eaters would enjoy it even more than I did. Not a heavy read but well written and very light hearted. Be aware, some mycophiles appear to be very earthy people and she openly shares that. Don't expect recipes either, but she does try to describe the taste of her favorites.