After this book, nothing will seem the same again . . . beautifully written and illustrated . . . dazzling . . . reveals a world that's both more extraordinary and more delicate than could be imagined

Riveting and surprising at every turn . . . A sensory as well as an intellectual pleasure

Wondrous . . . Humans should consider fungi among the greatest of earth's marvels

Mind-boggling . . . It's tempting . . . to see fungi as the biological model for a better world

Truly astounding . . . An engrossing, captivating journey

Gorgeous, intelligent, utterly absorbing . . . it expands our world, and makes us look up from the page with renewed wonder

One of those rare books that can truly change the way you see the world around you . . . revelatory . . . astounding . . . and brimming with infectious joy

A true masterpiece, a thrilling and fascinating insight into the living world . . . I hope and trust that it will become an instant classic

Blew my mind . . . Essential reading. Go and get swept up in a new world

Astonishing . . . it's impossible to finish this book without feeling awestruck

Delightful to read but also grand and dizzying in how thoroughly it recalibrates our understanding of the natural world

Sentence after sentence stopped me short. I ended it wonderstruck at the fungal world - the secrets of which modern science is only now beginning to fathom - and the earth-shaking, hierarchy-breaking implications of Sheldrake's argument. A remarkable work by a remarkable writer

A revelation . . . Changes the way we need to look at life, the planet and ourselves

Wonderfully written . . . surprising . . . The best science writing invites people to view the world around them in a new way, and Entangled Life is a perfect example

This is a book that, by virtue of the power of its writing, shifts your sense of the human . . . It will inspire a generation

I have been working on and reading and writing about fungi for a decade. And yet, nearly every page of this book contained either an observation so interesting or a turn of phrase so lovely that I was moved to slow down, stop, and reread . . . This book rocked me into remembering that nature, especially fungal nature, is big and encompassing and creative and destructive. It reminded me that fungi are, like the Universe, sublime

A magical journey deep into the roots of Nature by an expert storyteller . . . a must-read for citizen scientists hoping to make a positive difference on this sacred planet we share

Reading this book, I felt surrounded by a web of wonder. The natural world is more fantastic than any fantasy, so long as you have the means to perceive it. This book provides the means

You may never look at fungi in the same way . . . an eye-opening exploration of this mysterious taxonomic kingdom . . . a journey into an untapped world. It is both a wonderful collection of fungal feats . . and a personal account of Sheldrake's experiences with these miraculous organisms

Brilliant . . . entrancing . . . when we look closely [at fungi], we meet large, unsettling questions . . . Merlin Sheldrake . . . carries us easily into these questions with ebullience and precision . . . challenging some of our deepest assumptions

A joy . . . a captivating trip into the weird and wonderful mycorrhizal world around us - and inside us . . . full of startling revelations

The oddest and most uplifting book . . . It is, to say the least, rare to find such a vast area of life on Earth - fungi - about which one knows almost nothing, and which gives promise of being so important to human life during our next century

If you had told me a book about fungi would be both enthralling and completely mind-blowing, I wouldn't have believed you. And yet. Dazzlingly good

A triumph and a thing of vast beauty

Fungi are everywhere, and Merlin Sheldrake is an ideal guide to their mysteries. He's passionate, deeply knowledgeable and a wonderful writer

Deeply engaging and constantly surprising . . . the magic of mushrooms is not merely mind-expanding . . . it might expand the very concept of mind

As hard to put down as a thrilling detective novel, and one of the best works of popular science writing that I have enjoyed in years

It is impossible to put this book down. Entangled Life provides a window into the mind-boggling biology and fascinating cultures surrounding fungal life, as well as fungi’s innumerable uses in materials, medicine and ecology. Sheldrake asks us to consider a life-form that is radically alien to ours, yet vibrant and lively underfoot

This is not just for mushroom-heads - it is science at its most uplifting

Playful, strange, intensely philosophical ... Until very recently, human knowledge of this most mysterious lifeform, neither plant nor animal, has been extremely limited. This is astounding, given ... their seismic impact on life on earth ... [Sheldrake's] central vision of the interconnectedness of all life-forms feels shiveringly prescient'

Each chapter of this literary time machine takes us further back in prehistory, telling vivid stories about ancient creatures and their alien ecologies, ending 550 million years ago

The largest-known asteroid impact on Earth is the one that killed the dinosaurs 65?million years ago, but that is a mere pit stop on Thomas Halliday's evocative journey into planetary history in Otherlands. Each chapter of this literary time machine takes us further back into the deep past, telling vivid stories about ancient creatures and their alien ecologies, until at last we arrive 550?million years ago in the desert of what is now Australia, where no plant life yet covers the land. Halliday notes the urgency of reducing carbon emissions in the present to protect our settled patterns of life, but adds: "The idea of a pristine Earth, unaffected by human biology and culture, is impossible." It's an epic lesson in the impermanence of all things

The world on which we live is "undoubtedly a human planet", Thomas Halliday writes in this extraordinary debut. But "it has not always been, and perhaps will not always be". Humanity has dominated the Earth for a tiny fraction of its history. And that History is vast. We tend to lump all dinosaurs, for example, into one period in the distant past. But more time passed between the last diplodocus and the first tyrannosaurus than has passed between the last tyrannosaurus and the present day. A mind-boggling fact. This is a glorious, mesmerising guide to the past 500 million years bought to life by this young palaeobiologist's rich and cinematic writing

A book that I really want to read but haven't yet bought - so I hope it goes into my Christmas stocking - is Otherlands: A World in the Making by Thomas Halliday. It sounds so amazing - a history of the world before history, before people. He's trying to write the history of the organisms and the plants and the creatures and everything else as the world grows from protozoic slime or whatever we emerged from. It sounds like an absolutely incredible effort of imagination. I think that Christmas presents should be books you can curl up with and get engrossed in and transported by - and Otherlands sounds like exactly that

But, of course, not all history is human history, Otherlands, by Thomas Halliday, casts its readers further and further back, past the mammoths, past the dinosaurs, back to an alien world of shifting rock and weird plants. It is a marvel

Farming, unlike almost any other job, is bound up in a series of complex ropes that Rebanks captures in his own story so beautifully: family pressure and loyalty, ego, loneliness, and a special kind of peer pressure...English Pastoral is going to be the most important book published about our countryside in decades, if not a generation

A deeply personal account by a farmer of what has happened to farming in Britain. Everyone interested in food should read this compelling, informative, moving book

Rebanks is a rare find indeed: a Lake District farmer whose family have worked the land for 600 years, with a passion to save the countryside and an elegant prose style to engage even the most urban reader. He's refreshingly realistic about how farmed and wild landscapes can coexist and technology can be tamed. A story for us all.

Moving, thought-provoking and beautifully written.

English Pastoral is one of the most captivating memoirs of recent years ...The traditional pastoral is about retreat into an imagined rural idyll, but this confronts very real environmental dilemmas. Like the best books, it gives you hope and new energy.

James Rebanks has a sharp eye and a lyrical heart. His book is devastating, charting the murderous and unsustainable revolution in modern farming ... But it is also uplifting: Rebanks is determined to hang on to his Herdwicks, to keep producing food, and to bring back the curlews and butterflies and the soil fertility to his beloved fields. Truly a significant book for our time.

Lyrical and illuminating ... will fascinate city-dwellers and country-lovers alike.

A lyrical account of Rebanks' childhood on the Lake District farm that he's made famous; an account of how he learned about stockmanship and community and the rhythms of the land from his father and grandfather. [...] His writing is properly Romantic, which is a high compliment [...] Rebanks is obviously a wonderful human as well as a splendid writer.

A lament for lost traditions, a celebration of a way of living and a reminder that nature is 'finite and breakable.' Mr. Rebanks hits all the right notes and deserves to be heard

The most important story, perfectly told

Memorable, urgent, eloquent ... Rebanks speaks with blunt, unmatched authority. He is also a fine writer with descriptive power and a gift for characterisation ... English Pastoral may be the most passionate ecological corrective since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring