Finally another two books!

After not doing much book reading for most of this year, I can finally extend my 2022 Book List.

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures (2020) by Merlin Sheldrake

Written by an author with one of the most amazing names I’ve seen, Entangled Life is all about fungi. There are discussions on how fungi evolved, how they influence plant life, the truffles we eat and how we can use fungi for our own benefits, including one chapter that covers the technologies in The Moralbiont. Sheldrake is so obsessed with fungi that some of the illustrations in the book are even drawn with ink made from a fungus!

Although my interests and the book’s topic overlap quite well, I wasn’t crazy about all aspects of the book; several chapters are written in their own style and not all of them sat well with me. The chapter on truffles takes on the sort of narrative style which can drive a story along but which tends to irritate me as I find it all too convenient. I made a similar criticism about Darwin’s Ghosts a couple of years back. And there are other sections which are so effusive that it feels like he’s trying to make every other paragraph a pale, blue dot moment.

That said, I would still highly recommend the book to anyone with an interest in microbiology. Stylistic quibbles aside, there is a lot of very good and very interesting information in the pages. Most of it I knew of already but there were also plenty of titbits which I had not yet encountered.

Pup Sloots (2020) by Phoenix Xander Artemis

Jumping from fungi to a gay, BDSM, petplay romance might seem like quite a leap but there is actually a microbiology connection between the two; Pup Sloots takes place during the time of coronavirus. More specifically, back in 2020 when things were crazy, no vaccines were available and hard lock-downs were enacted across the world. Despite what I expected, the majority of the, very short, book actually takes place after the lock-down restrictions are lifted.

The story is told through the first-person perspective of an alpha pup who meets someone the night before lock-down restrictions are enacted and who must then wait until they can continue building their romance in person. The entire relationship is built around BDSM dynamics, in particular puppy play, which is a form of role play where the participants act as human dogs. The book describes it all as well as the main character’s thought processes and motivations.

It’s an interesting book. I really enjoyed the dynamics of the relationship and how everything is described (although I think some of the language which is claimed as being specific to puppy play is really just Lolspeak and common to many internet communities, e.g. using “gib” for “give.”) but it will not be for everyone as it does all build up to explicit sex. That said, my only real hesitation with recommending it would be the length; it is not even 100 pages. However, the psychological aspects of the story are good and it is even educational. If one has any curiosity in that area then one could assuage that curiosity while also helping support a small-scale writer.

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Moving forward to freedom in the bedroom

Several years back, I wrote about the UK’s plan to block all pornography by default and, before that, mentioned their past treatment of BDSM activities. I can now say something positive about the UK as they have recently declared that several sexual acts, particularly BDSM related, are no longer classed as obscenity. This is a great step forward which resolves some oddities in UK law where certain sexual acts were fully legal to perform but illegal to show in pornography. It’s especially good as we should not be classing activities as illegal if they have no victim. It’s absurd to suggest that a legal activity becomes illegal once on film.

E&R’s first birthday!

On the 14th October 2011 I put my first blog post online. Now it’s one year later and this is my 100th post. It’s not a coincidence, I planned that way because it’s a nice round number. This is a chance for me to celebrate where I’ve come from, what I’ve achieved over the year and to highlight a few of my favourite posts.

I started reading blogs when I was doing my honours degree as a way to keep up with what was happening in science. I can’t remember exactly which blogs I started out on but I remember Pharyngula was one of them and, later, why Evolution Is True. They are still some of my favourite blogs, though I must say I much prefer WEIT. This was all after I’d started reading Dawkins, thanks to a professor in first year biology who mentioned the selfish gene during a lecture series on evolution. He didn’t agree with a gene-centred view of evolution but did recommend it for those that wanted to see a different perspective, and after reading it I couldn’t see how anyone could see a different view of evolution.

International Fetish Day essay

This year, the 20th of January was the fourth International Fetish Day, building off the 2008 National Fetish Day in the UK. The purpose is both to raise awareness and support for the BDSM community and create opposition to laws concerning extreme pornography. I’m mostly going to focus on the laws as it shows what I’d consider governments going to far, i.e. attempting to regulate people’s private lives.