The Handbook of Contemporary Animism (Harvey, ed)
I'd begun this book back in 2021 and decided in the summer that it wasn't going to hang around my neck, albatross-like, into 2024. It's good. It's a collection of essays about animism in many contexts, mostly focused on either anthropological work or interrogating the field's relationship to that work. But it also includes literary criticism, dance, philosophy, and an essay about anime. Graham Harvey is one of the proponents of animism both within anthropology and outside it, as he's both an anthropologist and a practicing druid. When you see me talking about animism this is the book the information is probably coming from.
The Horary Textbook (Frawley)
This is a very good introductory book for how to do horary -- divination via casting an astrological chart for the moment you hear or formulate a question. And it works, I can say, despite being a rank amateur. Frawley does some good old fashioned gender essentialism, but it's sort of, you know, fine I guess, like he's just at that point uncritically parroting parts of the tradition. He almost gets it when he discusses what to do if one works with gay clients, but he doesn't actually, he just says to avoid using Mars and Venus as signficators as you would "usually do."
I'm told by some professional astrologers that some of the stuff in the book is idosyncratic to Frawley's practice. Alone, that's not a problem, as everyone is going to develop techniques and meanings to images. He doesn't always tell you when he's doing that though. But of course if you go on to read any other sources you'll see the differences, and if you don't, then you still have a workable system.
Egyptian Mythology (Pinch)
Pinch is a scholar and translator; this is an excellent intro text to Egyptian myth. She chunks it into four broad sections: an intro and history of Egypt; a mythic history, beginning with the creation of the world and going through such events as the withdrawal of the goddess and the contendings of Horus and Set; an A-Z of gods, spirits, animals, and other things of interest; and finally, a good bibliography.
Real Sorcery (Miller)
Very practical book on both basic magic and also trying to use it effectively. The basic idea is that if you're spending hours a day performing magic to get a job, but you're not sending out job applications, you're not going to get much of anywhere. That's a simple example but that's the general idea; Miller's whole thing is working between mundane and magical methods to get the best results. I bought this book because there's an alternative to the Golden Dawn daily stuff I'd been doing that I wanted to try, and I always feel owning the book is better for learning magic and so on, if I can. It's affordable, anyway.
The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again (Harrison)
I briefly mentioned reading this book at the time. It continued to be very good. As usual, it ends with me feeling as though there ought to be more, and of course there ought to be, the lives aren't over, the novel's just ended. Course of the Heart is Harrison's book that introduced me to that way he has of doing things. This is, basically, a riff on The Water-Babies, a book that, I'm annoyed to say, I've intended to read for well over a decade -- nearly two -- because it was featured in an early "podcast" that was just a pair of academics recording their lectures in their fantasy fiction class. I'm annoyed because I wish I'd read it first, but I certainly wasn't going to pause reading Harrison to go hack through it.
To some degree, too, you could describe this as "what if Innsmouth but slow?"
Advanced Planetary Magic (Miller)
An ebook Miller sells on his site, with some planetary additions to the daily ritual practice I mentioned above (the Heptasphere it's called, and you can find it online, which I did before I bought the book), and "calls," or short prayers focused on the interactions of pairs of planets through the planetary days and hours.
Hakumei and Mikochi v6 (Kashiki)
I think this volume gets us totally past the anime, which I may have said last time as well. Jada, my favorite character and the only time I have ever seriously used the word "headcanon" (I decided she's trans) reappears, and everybody gets together during a flood to cook food. They also get together to make a new kitchen. And they get together to sew clothes. The comic's about people getting together basically. Also a badger bakes snacks.
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou v3 (Ashinano)
This volume is marked mostly by Alpha's decision to leave home after a typhoon shears off the cafe from her house, but leaves the house itself mostly intact. She travels around the country on foot for about a year, seeing things outside her region, including an annual rampaging wildfire people gather to watch because there's no putting it out (hahaaaaaa fuck us am I right?).
She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat v3 (Yuzaki)
I was kind of lukewarm about the first two volumes of this, I guess in part because the way she draws people eating is a little distressing to me, like, it's more naturalistic and I, uh, let's say I've never understood why mukbang videos are a thing. But my partner got really into it, so I grabbed volume 3 and let me tell you, it's Good, Actually.
In retrospect I think something I personally was struggling with is that there were only the two characters, really. Even something as focused as Kase-san... has friends, rivals, people who get names and are important to the story at least. So volume three of SLtC improved, for me, a ton because it introduces two new characters, and I would die and or kill for both of them.
The artist also doubles down on being loud and proud in queer spaces, as one of the new characters A: is herself an asexual lesbian and B: teaches the main character about the ace/demi spectrum.
I do always dislike it when the only thing a review says is that the book is queer, though, so in addition: it tackles a few forms of family trauma, mostly related to food but of course food is always love, right, that's what food does, as a metaphor, a lot of the time. And when a character hates herself because she doesn't enjoy eating, something I really appreciated is that above and beyond all the characters doing the things where they say "oh that's fine" also the one who loves to cook keeps making her drinks.
Also I kinda want to try making lassi now.