June 2025 Reading Wrap-Up
June continues the whole pattern of "it just keeps coming and it keeps on coming". Despite this, I managed to read twelve books this month, including The Orphic Hymns. It felt a little strange trying to give that one a 1 to 10 rating because of how many layers of translation and interpretation went into it, so it's absent from the list below.
1/10 - Why Did They Publish This?
None applicable.
2/10 - Trash
None applicable.
3/10 - Meh
Runes: An Introduction | Kim Farnell
So...this isn't the worst book ever. But it's also not good at all. It's just...deeply mediocre, but then there are also a bunch of standard-issue problems in it (no fucking sources cited, misuse of "smudging" and "shaman", et cetera) that I'm honestly just kind of bored. I'm keeping it as a reference for runes as needed, but I don't recommend it. Also the texture of the paper and cover both were bad and cheap and I hated them.
Random fucking guess at the target demographic: Someone who has heard of magic but knows nothing about it and has never once opened another book on witchcraft but really likes very specific and particular instructions.
4 to 6/10 - Mid-Tier
Fortune Telling With Playing Cards | Jonathan Dee
This was a deeply mediocre book. The first portion, the introduction, was just me going "cite your sources, where are you hearing this" and the middle portion was just "okay so this is a standard guidebook to the cards and trying to cement meanings" and then the rest was just "why are you making this tarot, are you okay sir". It will remain on my shelves as a reference book, but it wasn't really enjoyable. 4 out of 10.
Random fucking guess at the target demographic: Someone who has dabbled in tarot but got bored and wants to just take that and copy-paste their experiences with tarot over to playing cards.
7 to 8/10 - Good With Caveats
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures In The Culinary Underbelly | Anthony Bourdain
The caveat here is that I did zone out and skim through some parts, but other than that, I quite enjoyed this book. I'm not exactly a stranger to the realities of restauranting, but I'm not familiar with it either, so this was a very helpful read. Ultimately I'm giving it an 8 out of 10, but I could be convinced to bump it fully to 10/10 if someone mentioned wanting to open a restaurant within hearing distance of me. Also, there was no bumble-assing with recipes to break the flow of the memoir.
Five-Star Stranger | Kat Tang
This was an incredibly compelling and quite short (230 pages) read, but there were plenty of parts that I glazed over on my way through. Particularly the handful of sex scenes. And when I made it to the last chapter, all I said was "That's how it ends?" It certainly was one way to end the story, but not quite the ending I had been looking for. Despite that, very good book. 7/10, will be keeping.
Mythic Plants: Potions And Poisons From The Gardens Of The Gods | Ellen Zachos
So, I've been dealing with this book for two straight days, and I've put together my thoughts. Overall, it is a good resource for the Greek mythology of particular plants if you don't have Internet and can't just check theoi.com for the same information. But a gardening book this is not. Behold the Amazon listing:
Observe the final paragraph:
Some of those plants were real and still exist today; some of them are mythological, with powers we can only imagine. This book will focus on how the Ancient Greeks used plants in their lives and loves and conquests - focusing particularly on ones we can cultivate today. Includes tips throughout for bringing these ancient plants into your garden.
It does not. At least, not in the way it's supposed to and the way you would assume it does based on the blurb. At most, it gives you the Latin name of the plants and occasionally (I would say in less than half of the entries) mentions things like hardness zone and usually just tells you to go to your "local garden center" to pick some up. Likewise, there are no recipes for the potions/poisons mentioned in the title of the book. It's just a book on plant mythology, nothing more than that.
In the introduction before we get into the plants, the author mistakenly lists Persephone instead of Demeter as the goddess of harvests and on the Olympian family tree. You'd think that she would have picked that up, especially with the focus on the Hymn to Demeter in later entries in the book.
And it was a fucking flashbang to open a book published in 2025 and find THREE references to Harry Potter on pages 9, 11, and 43. Two of them were in the mandrake section and the last was in the dittany section.
There's also the misuse of the word "shaman" as usual in here, but that's kind of a given because everyone fucking misuses it. Finally, I miss the in-text citations that I was spoiled with in other books. Especially with some of the stranger claims.
I do, however, appreciate the strong focus on safety and the author clearly knows her shit about plants. Based on what I've seen on the author's website, this feels like someone stretching into mythology for their compendiums of plants rather than someone starting from mythology and narrowing down to plants.
Overall, I will give this book a 7 out of 10. Very interesting read, but less interesting when you've already got a lot of it researched. I will be keeping this for reference when my Internet sucks too bad to use theoi.com.
Botanical Curses And Poisons: The Shadow-Lives Of Plants | Fez Inkwright
So, I usually love Fez Inkwright's works, and I enjoyed this one too, but there were a few things that made my hackles raise. For one thing, the author leans heavily on Murray's debunked "witch cult hypothesis" during the intro chapters, and I'm skeptical of using Robert fucking Graves as a source (for good reason). There are several instances of using "shaman" when not referring to actual shamanism, along with multiple instances of using "American Indian" despite also using Indigenous and Native American properly.
The organization also just...sucks ass. Out of everything, that's the most annoying part. You'd think that the plants in the "Plants A to Z" section would be listed in alphabetical order, yes? Well, sometimes they are, and sometimes they're not. Some are sorted based on overall grouping (such as the section about fungi), some are alphabetical based on the first word of their chosen common name, and some are based on the second or third word and the first is added after a comma. I'm just glad that the Latin names are also frequently used.
Despite these problems, I will still give it a 7 out of 10. A fun read, though I'm now more skeptical of the origins of some of the folklore. Some are more science-focused and some are more folklore-focused, but pretty much every entry has both.
9/10 - Very Very Good
Divine Dirt: The Art Of Using Dirt In Magic, Ritual & Spellcraft | Charity L Bedell
So, despite a few parts in this book where my eyebrows decided to adventure around my forehead, I fucking adored this book for being so damn specific. The author does not teach you how to do magic, the author just teaches you how to use DIRT for your own magic. Just be aware that there are some sections you will be rolling your eyes at.
Random fucking guess at the target demographic: Someone who is already practicing some form of witchcraft but really wants to get into dirt as a magical tool and loves exploring the nuance of an easily-overlooked thing.
Weather Magic: Witchery, Science, Lore | Debra L Burris
This book tricked me into taking Storm Spotter Training again. There is so much science stuff in this book, which is very good. The exercises, crafts, and divination recommendations are extremely thematic, and it doesn't feel like you could just swap them around. Having said that, we experienced some chakra appropriation fuckery in the rainbow chapter and I started wondering why the hell some of these chapters were separated as they were (for example, it went from the rain chapter to snow to thunderstorm to lightning, and hail was a subchapter within the thunderstorm chapter), but I still came out of it with the same spinning head that regular weather training does to me.
Random fucking guess at the target demographic: Someone who is already practicing some form of witchcraft but wants to practice a form of magic with a strong scientific backing. Or if you want to take Storm Spotter Training but are nervous about it. It is THOROUGH.
A Sign Of Affection, volumes 2, 3, and 4 | Suu Morishita [Young Adult]
After reading further, I feel comfortable putting this as a YA series in my listings. So! Like I said for last month's wrap-up, I greatly enjoyed this, and it's interesting to see just how much the characters interact with our main protagonist Yuki and how the writers portray her deafness. It's very true to life. I will be continuing this series, though I'll be putting it on hold for a bit because another shoujo series I was reading just got two more volumes in Missouri Evergreen.
10/10 - Unironically Recommend To Everyone
None applicable.
