Time to dump some mushroom book info (this isn’t all my books, mind, just the ones I find myself reaching for the most.
Mind, I live in NE Ohio, so these books are definitely catered to Ohio/Pennslvania regions - think central Appalachia
Mushrooms of the Northeast - by Teresa Marrone & Walt Sturgeon: I love this little field guide. Its quite compact and doesn’t really take up a ton of extra weight, and I think does a great job of explaining different mushroom groups in a way that is understandable even to the beginner. Obviously there are some pages focused on one species, but its not afraid to group the more difficult groups together - so there’s a page for Helvella, a page for Russula, a page for Lactarius, etc. And bonus, one of the authors, Walt Sturgeon, is active on iNat if you’re in the area (big mushroom ider, obviously) and holds workshops around the region quite often.
Field Guide to Wild Mushrooms of Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic - by Bill Russel: This is the other field guide that I own, I don’t use it quite as often (its about twice as tall as the other field guide, so a little bulkier,) but does have good information as well. Fungi are organized by seasons, so it makes it easy to flip through a smaller section to find what you’re looking at without having to go digging too much.
Mushrooms of West Virginia and the Central Appalachians - by William C Roody: This is not a field guide, its a proper, large, detailed book. It has great pictures, great descriptions, and I love that everything is organized by major identifying features of the mushrooms - IE there’s a section for boletes, a section for shelf fungi, a section for cap-and-stem fungi with gills, etc. Its pretty intuitive to go through and IMHO my favorite book on the shelf.
Mushrooms Demystified - David Arora: This book is definitely not a field guide, its more of a bible. Full disclosure, Arora definitely is more of a west coast mycologist and it shows since I do occasionally find it lacking in a few east coast species, BUT if you’re looking for a higher level book that has excellent taxonomic keys and many species that are never going to show up in a more user-friendly field guide, this is it. Though I’ll be honest, I usually end up pulling this out when I’m trying to ID something difficult and then realize I can’t regardless because I don’t own a microscope. Whoops.
The Bolete Filter - Okay so this is a website, not technically a field guide; its a taxonomic key site that is largely based off of the book North American Boletes (which I also own,) and one of my go-tos for filtering boletes down to species. I seriously wish there was a resource like this for some other mushroom groups, because my goodness is it useful. (I desperately want this but for amanitas XD)
Mushroom Expert - this is another website curated by the Ohio-based mycologist Michael Kuo, and another absolutely phenomenal resource. He has multiple published works, I own Mushrooms of the Midwest, but the website cannot be beaten for ease of use. I will say, he generally avoids writing about edibility of mushrooms, so if you are looking for a guide for that you’ll have to check elsewhere - but otherwise it is a wonderful resource.
