2024 Book List

Once again, I’m very late with this. I’ve had the books sitting on my desk for a few weeks; so even though I haven’t been reading as much as I intended, it has not been nothing. The first two books of this year might seem awfully similar to a previous year.

Entangled Life (Illustrated Edition, 2023) by Merlin Sheldrake

Entangled Life? That sounds familiar… Yes, it does. I read Entangled Life back in 2022. This is the illustrated edition with abridged text but the addition of more than 100 full-colour images! Obviously, there is overlap with the scientific content but, since I’m working with fungi, it doesn’t hurt to refresh one’s knowledge from time to time.

Since the major change is the inclusion of the photographs, that’s what I will focus on. There are a lot of them; a photograph every 2-3 pages! And they are really beautiful. You will see lichens, mushrooms, microscopy, infected insects and more. They are an amazing addition because you see a lot of the beauty and diversity that you probably won’t have encountered in real life and which you can now associate with the text.

The abridged text is shorter but I didn’t notice any huge loss of information. I criticised the writing style of the original book but I didn’t have that issue here. Perhaps, I changed or, perhaps, the bits I disliked were cut out. So, with more readable text and many beautiful photographs, I would highly recommend this illustrated version over the original text-only version.

Red-Haired Librarian (2022) by Miroslav Bobek

This is the second English-language collection of articles from Prague Zoo director Miroslav Bobek. It’s very similar to Vultures in the Hotel California, which I read in 2022. The chapters are translations of short articles written by Bobek between 2020 and 2022. Each one is accompanied by a related photograph. As before, it covers the activities of Prague Zoo and the broader conservation projects that the zoo helps to fund.

There’s only so much to say. If you’re interested in animals, conservation or zoos, you will probably enjoy the book. The chapters cover diverse topics; giving a 12-year-old potoroo a truffle for her birthday, recounting the time the orangutans escaped their enclosure, figuring out what animal was being described in an account from a Czech castle in the 1600s, releasing Przewalski’s horses back to the wilds of Mongolia and seeing endangered pangolins being sold illegally at a market in Cameroon.

Previous years’ books: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

What happens when a fungus dies in the forest?

I recently published a new paper (Decomposition of Fomes fomentatius fruiting bodies – transition of healthy living fungus into a decayed bacteria-rich habitat is primarily driven by Arthropoda) where I am the first author. The focus of the paper was on the fungus Fomes fomentarius, commonly known as the tinder fungus or hoof fungus. I thought it might be nice to write a little summary here for those who will not read a full scientific paper.

A large example of Fomes fomentarius I found on a dead log in the Bavarian Forest, Germany.

The story started before I even joined the lab. My colleagues had collected samples of living and dead F. fomentarius (hereafter referred to as Fomes) from trees in the Žofín Forest in the south of Czechia, just next to the Austrian border. Fomes is widespread in European forests and is what is known as a white-rot fungus. This means that it is capable of digesting all the major components of deadwood; brown-rot fungi are unable to digest lignin. Together, this makes Fomes very important in understanding the decomposition of deadwood, which allows nutrients to cycle back to other living things.

Dog brains, language and Deutsche Welle

A dog set up for measuring brain activity. (Still from the DW video.)

I like seeing stories about science, but they need to be clear and accurate. Trying to understand the world is complicated; scientific studies have limitations and often address very specific questions. If people aren’t clear with their wording, they will give an inaccurate picture of what was done. That’s why I was quite disappointed with a recent video from Deutsche Welle—a news source that I trust to give accurate information.

The video is about a recent study on the way that dogs’ brains respond to human language. Specifically, it looked at the brain response when a dog hears a known object name and then is shown either the named object or a different object. If there is a difference between these responses (and there was), it is evidence that the dog forms a mental picture of the object when it hears its name, i.e. that it has a referential understanding of language. It’s a really cool finding.

Mini-documentary about fungi

Packaging material made from fungi (Image: MME)

If you remember my commentary to my short story, The Moralbiont, you’ll know that it talked about alternative uses for fungi, such as vegan leather. The German broadcaster, Deutsche Welle has a really neat English-version of a mini-documentary on the topic, created by Bayerischer Rundfunk, a public broadcaster in Bavaria, and Arte, a European public service channel.

The documentary, The magic of mushroom mycelium, covers some of the topics that I discussed and some new ones. It primarily focuses on using fungi for bioremediation—that is using fungi to remove pollutants from the soil—and turning the network of fungal cells—the mycelium—into materials which can replace plastics or leather.

Final book of 2023

I managed to squeeze in one last book for 2023 between Christmas and the end of the year. That was roughly the pace that I used to read books during high school. Most of the year, I am now distracted by other things. That’s also why I didn’t complete this post until long after the new year!

Black Mamba Under My Bed (2021) by Ruth Taylor Stott

I picked this one up at a local Christmas market in Cape Town. The reason I got it was that the author also grew up in Cape Town and taught at Rustenburg Girls’ Junior School. Rustenburg is where several women, from at least two generations, of my family have been educated. It’s nice to read a book set in familiar surroundings. The book was written as a gift for her husband’s 90^th birthday because, as they only met later in life, he was not present for her first 50-odd years.

The major drawback of the book is that it is self-published and could have used an editor. Given that the author is a former teacher, it’s better than some self-published works but there are still a number of grammatical oddities and paragraphs that are split in ways that just do not make sense. Related to the issue with paragraphs is the need to organise the narrative better; the early chapters are collections of anecdotes that start and stop with few connecting thoughts. It may be that it’s just difficult to create flow between small stories but that’s where an experienced editor would have been useful.

The early chapters cover some childhood memories and Stott’s early teaching experiences in various South African schools. Later chapters, which have far more structure and flow, concern her family’s experience helping to raise a black child during apartheid as well as trips to foreign countries such as the US, Israel and Thailand. The core strength of the book is richness of all her experiences. Stott may not be a celebrity but she has lived life to the full and her autobiography is filled with inspiring stories. That said, while some experiences may make for a compelling tale, I am glad they were her experiences and not mine.

A little Czech reading

The latest additions to my 2023 Book List concern Prague and its history.

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories (2020) by Franz Kafka

Since I’ve been in Prague for almost two years, I figured I should make more of an effort to know some of the history and culture. My first stop was to try reading Kafka, possibly the most famous Czech, particularly to people outside of Czechia. (One of my Czech colleagues disagreed about who the most famous Czech was but I’d not even heard of her suggestions.) The collection I have is a translation by Christopher Moncrieff of a 1996 compilation but, considering Kafka died in 1924, all the stories are obviously much older.

Most of the stories are extremely short; maybe a page or two and sometimes only a single paragraph! I also found most of these to be completely boring with nothing interesting going on in either the narrative or the language. The longer stories, like The Metamorphosis and The Penal Colony, are generally better but usually have very unsatisfying endings, often with the main character dying. The characters themselves are also odd. The main character in The Metamorphosis wakes up to find that he’s transformed into an insect but pretty much all his thoughts are about how that’s going to make him late for work! Priorities!

Kafka was a German speaking resident of Prague, which was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until its collapse in 1918, so I thought maybe his work was better in the original German. But the German-speakers I asked didn’t think the stories were any better in German. Overall I was not impressed. I didn’t find anything of note in his work and it seems to me that Kafka is quite overrated.

Prague in Black and Gold (1997) by Peter Demetz

The second book I read covers the history of Prague from it’s founding to the days of the First Czechoslovak Republic. Each chapter covers a different time period and is full of interesting details; for example, I learned that the Kingdom of Bohemia had an elective monarchy! Before that, I only really thought of hereditary monarchies. The book is extremely interesting but dense and many of the sentences are so complicated that you need to read them over several times. Due to the sheer number of dates, events and people, I can only remember some broad themes. Those themes are pertinent in light of the idea of historical recurrence.

Much of Prague’s history has revolved around the tensions of German and Czech speakers, both of whom have occupied the city, in different proportions, over the centuries. Germanic tribes settled in Prague about 2000 years ago; driven by pressure from the Roman Empire and replacing the Celts that previously inhabited Bohemia. The Germanic tribes disappear in the mid sixth century, around the same time that Slavic tribes first settled in the area, but later migrated back to Bohemia. The questions of language and national identity were a constant struggle over the centuries and particularly interesting to read about as we have not moved past these issues in modern times; especially having seen how, over the past three decades, political discourse in South Africa has shifted from the post-1994 emphasis on a non-racial “rainbow nation” to the current, racist ethno-nationalism. Given that context, is it heartening or depressing to learn that, during the 1920s, there were protests in Czechoslovakia over what to do about German monuments or that Ferdinand Peroutka, in response to a comment from T G Masaryk, Czechoslovakia’s first president, “skeptically asked how many centuries immigrants and colonists would have to live in a country before they ceased being immigrants and colonists.”

A third group, though smaller and with less political and economic power than the Germans and Czechs were the Prague Jews. Their place in Prague was constantly in flux with each new ruler’s changing whims. For example, Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria-Hungary including the Kingdom of Bohemia, kicked out the 10 000 Prague Jews (~25% of the city’s population) in 1744, although she allowed them to return in 1748. During the time of Charles IV, the first king of Bohemia to also be crowned Holy Roman Emperor, Jews were seen as camerknechte –the personal property of the king. About one decade after Charles IV’s death, came the 1389 Prague pogrom which saw approximately 3000 Prague Jews killed. The book quotes Rabbi Avigdor ben Isaac Kara’s elegy on the dead of 1389, which could just as easily have been written about the Holocaust (An event which is worryingly denied by about 20% of young Americans!): “Now… Father of us all, it is time to proclaim that the killings must come to an end! Say it now that not a single one will be added to the terrible number of victims anymore! Long enough were they killed and choked to death to the world’s derision, long enough!”

Songs about scientists

Recently, I was trying to think of songs about specific scientists and I could only think of two! I know a few that are about science in general (both good and bad ones) and there are certainly parody songs available online but it seems rare for professional bands to sing about scientists. This is a bit sad because it’s a way to recognise scientists and science in our cultural products.

Even when I searched online for songs about scientists, the lists were not really satisfactory. Most turned out to be songs about science in general or have little to nothing to do with science. Since none of the lists even mentioned the songs that I already know are about scientists, I am absolutely sure that they are incomplete and that there must be more out there. For now, I will share the ones that I do know because they are also good songs.

Flight and fungi

Flights of Fancy (2021) by Richard Dawkins

This one is written by Richard Dawkins and illustrated by Slovakian artist Jana Lenzová. The book is absolutely beautiful with colourful illustrations on every page. The topic is flight and Dawkins tries to cover it in all its forms. There are discussions about the evolution of flight in birds and insects, how small things float in the air and how humans are able to fly with hot air balloons, helicopters and planes. While the topic is quite interesting, I had some issues with the text.

As one can see form the copious illustrations, Flights of Fancy is primarily aimed at a younger audience than the books that built Dawkins’ reputation. Presumably, this is responsible for my biggest gripe with the book; its lack of detail or insight. The first chapter was, by far, the worst at this and seemed to jump to a new topic almost every other sentence with no depth at all. Later chapters were a lot better but still often superficial and the most interesting parts were where specific examples were explained in more depth.

I used to love Dawkins’ work but, given that I also disliked his 2019 book Outgrowing God, I wondered if maybe I had moved on. Then I remembered that Science in the Soul was still amazing and insightful; it contains mostly his older essays. That leaves me with two possibilities, either, as he’s got older, he’s lost the depth and writing skill that I enjoyed or the focus on a younger audience means that his books are no longer a good fit for me. I certainly hope it is the latter. In the end, while I enjoyed parts of it, it’s difficult to really recommend it.

The Hidden Kingdom of Fungi (2022) by Keith Seifert

The Hidden Kingdom of Fungi is written by a Canadian mycologist with several decades of experience and a wide base of knowledge. It covers many different aspects of fungal life such as how they live in communities, cool interactions such as those that form lichens, relationships to humans and our abodes, the production of medicines and food, diseases which are damaging crops and so much more.

Last year, I read another book which covers the fungal world; Entangled Life. As could be expected, these two books do overlap quite a bit in content but they also have their own unique perspectives and some topics which are not covered by the other. For example, Entangled Life has a long chapter on truffles while The Hidden Kingdom of Fungi ignores truffles but talks more about the fungi that you will find living in your own home. In addition, while I think The Hidden Kingdom of Fungi should still be easy to understand, it seems to give a deeper and more detailed explanation of what is happening.

I can’t help comparing the books and I think that The Hidden Kingdom of Fungi has the advantage. It is broad but feels more informative than Entangled Life. It also doesn’t strain itself to be poetic and all there is strong consistency between all the chapters; my two main criticisms of Entangled Life. Both are still well worth reading if you want to learn more about fungi but, if you could only read one, I would recommend reading The Hidden Kingdom of Fungi.