The Book Report by Rebecca Traver - Our Online Bookshop Curator‍

Welcome to the Book Report! I’m so pleased to be meeting you here to share our latest featured list – Modern Witchcraft + Magical Studies for Healing and Self-Care. I usually feature this list closer the Samhain / Halloween, but, for reasons known only to the Book Goddess, this list stepped forward for July. Hopefully it will resonate with you as well.

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Also included in this report is a selection of New + Newly Discovered titles; a special group of Books for Young and Young at Heart Readers; and a couple of Just Because + Just for Fun offerings. 

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I hope you enjoy what you find here and know that, as always, 

I am honored by the privilege of taking up space in your inbox.

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“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

~W.B. Yeats

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FEATURED LIST – MODERN WITCHCRAFT + MAGICAL STUDIES FOR HEALING AND SELF-CARE

Alive with Spirits: The Path and Practice of Animistic Witchcraft by Althaea Sebastiani guides us to a path to fully embrace a world filled with spirits, communion with the Land, and a greater sense of belonging in the world – a worldview known as animism.

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Celtic Goddess Grimoire: Invoke the Enduring Power of the Celtic Feminine Divine from Annwyn Avalon introduces us to goddesses such as Brigid, the Morrigan, Sulis, Rhiannon, Rosmerta, and Elen of the Ways, as well as faery women like Melusine and Morgan Le Fae. Here, we find a practical guide to working with these sacred beings, including exercises for celebrating, honoring, and serving them.

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Tea Leaf Reading: Your Guide to More Than 500 Symbols by Jacqueline Towers is a fun beginner’s guide to reading the symbols found in tea leaves. We learn how to properly prepare a cup of tea, how to interpret different surfaces of the interior of the cup, read and work with over 500 common symbols and images, including common astrological and tarot-related symbols, and how to modify the practice using coffee grounds instead of tea.

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Herbana Witch: A Year in the Forest by Cecilia Lattari with illustrations by Alice Guidi teaches us to use the power of nature and the wisdom of the forest so that we may deeply understand the herbs, barks, mushrooms, roots, flowers, and woodland plant we find there.

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Wyrd Sisters: A Deck of Spells and Rituals by Casey Zabala is a hand-illustrated deck designed to connect us with our personal magic and guide us on the path to self-empowerment from the creator of the Wanderer's Tarot.

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A Floral Grimoire: Plant Charms, Spells, Recipes, and Rituals from Patricia Telesco sets out to combine Wise Woman know-how with the Victorians’ floral fascination, blending folklore, history, and magic to create an enchanting, engaging book.

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Bud, Blossom & Leaf: The Magical Herb Gardener’s Handbook from Dorothy Morrison with a foreword by H. Byron Ballard is a unique grimoire which will delight any Witch looking to incorporate gardening into their magical practice.

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The Healing Tree: Botanicals, Remedies, and Rituals from African Folk Traditions by Stephanie Rose Bird with a foreword by Luisah Teish offers a recounting of the story of the sacred wood: how to live in it, learn from it, and derive spiritual enrichment from it, as we also learn how to preserve and protect it.

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Year of the Dark Goddess: A Journey of Ritual, Renewal & Rebirth by Lara Vesta is a guided journey of empowerment and healing through life’s difficult passages, with practical tools, embodied rituals. writing prompts, seasonal self-care practices, and community creation.

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Time for Magic: A Shamanarchist's Guide to the Wheel of the Year from Jamie Reid, Philip Carr-Gomm, John Marchant, and Stephen Ellcock offers an entrancing overview of Jamie Reid’s incredible art, structured around the eight seasonal festivals of the Wheel of the Year (the equinoxes and solstices plus Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh, and Samhain).

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Herbal Magick: A Guide to Herbal Enchantments, Folklore, and Divination by Gerina Dunwich with a foreword by Arin Murphy-Hiscock sets forth an ancient tradition, rooted in pagan lore. Within its pages we learn how to use roots, flowers, leaves, and barks of common plants for practical magick. Both a valuable reference for beginner and advanced students of the magickal arts.

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To browse the entire list, click here.

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“Magic comes from inside you. It is a part of you. You can’t weave together a spell that you don’t believe in.”

~Jon Finch

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New + Newly Discovered

The Upgrade: How the Female Brain Gets Stronger and Better in Midlife and Beyond by Louann Brizendine explains how a woman’s brain undergoes a series of transformations in midlife. Dr. Brizendine was among the first to share why women think, communicate, and feel differently than men. Now, inspired by her own experiences and those of the thousands of women at her clinic, she has a message that is nothing short of revolutionary. In the time of life known as menopause, women’s brains are reshaped, for the better, in a way that creates new power, a bracing clarity, and a laser-like sense of purpose if you know how to seize it.

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The River: Sailing the Stream of Consciousness from the wondrous Nick Bantock features forty-eight surrealistic cards that feed your imagination and personal mythology, offering lessons on how to think intuitively with images rather than words alone.

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Handbook for the Heartbroken: A Woman's Path from Devastation to Rebirth from Sara Avant Stover explores personal and collective losses of all kinds – including the end of a relationship or a job, death of a loved one, a natural disaster, infertility, abortion, a financial crisis, or any other form of loss. The author writes, “We’re encouraged at every turn to hurry up and get on with it, but by trying to power through these messier seasons of life, we’re denying ourselves the very answers to our healing and growth.”

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You Don't Have to Do It Alone: The Power of Friendship is the latest from Mark Nepo which shares and celebrates the value of connection and community. Here, he gives us example from history, mythology, and his own life – unraveling the nuances of close friendships and revealing how a true friend can be the key to our aliveness. Trust me, dear reader, you’re going to want to gift a copy to each of your nearest and dearest.

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The How: Notes on the Great Work of Meeting Yourself by Yrsa Daley-Ward encourages readers to begin cultivating a meaningful, conscious relationship with our most intimate self – the one we visit in dreams, the one that calls to us from a glimmering future. With a beautiful design and intriguing meditations, we can use this book to start conversations, prompt writing, to delve deeper – whether you’re solo or with friends, out and about, or writing from the solace of home.

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A Shamanic Herbal: Plant Teachers and Animal Medicines by Matthew Wood explores the alphabet of Nature personified in animals and the spiritual lessons of animal medicines; animals personified in plants, including Turtle, Bear, Deer, Wolf, Alligator, and Horse Medicine teachings. Revealing the shamanic roots of his herbal teachings, the author provides not only an inside view of his life-long spiritual path, but also an immersive experiential guide to the shamanic wisdom of our plant and animal teachers.

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Practices for Embodied Living: Experiencing the Wisdom of Your Body from Hillary L. McBride offers a compassionate, healthy, and holistic perspective on embodied life. In this follow-up book, McBride takes the principles of The Wisdom of Your Body and puts them into action in practical, tangible ways.

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The Solutionary Way: Transform Your Life, Your Community, and the World for the Better by Zoe Weil with a foreword by Jane Goodall forges a path away from polarization toward ethical problem solving and a more humane, equitable, and healthy society.

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Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place: A Transgender Memoir by Jackson Bird chronicles the ups and downs of growing up gender-confused. Illuminated by journal entries spanning childhood to adolescence to today, candidly recalling the challenges and loneliness he endured as he came to terms with both his gender and his bisexual identity.

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You Are the Happiness You Seek: Uncovering the Awareness of Being by Rupert Spira distills the message of all the great religious and spiritual traditions into two essential truths: happiness is the very nature of our self or being, and we share our being with everyone and everything. Could there be any greater discovery in life than to know that we are already that for which we long?

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Worry Lines: You're Doing Really Well Given the Circumstances is a curated selection of the most beloved illustrations from the wildly popular Worry Lines Instagram account, making it the perfect gift for a friend, family member, or anyone who may need a reminder that it’s OK not to be perfect.

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And Then? and Then? What Else? by Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) is a personal memoir and a literary exploration, a how-to book and a critical inquiry, a sequence of stories and a series of events – just the ticket for anyone who loved books when they were a child, and still loves them now.

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“You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

~A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

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Books for Young Readers + the People Who Love Them

Bless the Earth: A Collection of Poetry for Children to Celebrate and Care for Our World by June Cotner and Nancy Tupper Ling with illustrations by Keum Jin Song shows the miracle of our planet Earth through beautiful imagery and delightful poetry, calling all people, young and old, to care for our wonderful world.

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Breathe Like a Bear from Kira Willey, illustrated by Anni Betts, is a sweet collection of mindfulness exercises to teach kids techniques for managing their bodies, breath, and emotions. Best of all, these 30 simple, short breathing practices can be performed anytime, anywhere: in the car to the grocery store, during heavy homework nights at home, or even at a child’s desk at school.

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Continental Drifter from Kathy MacLeod tells the story of a girl named Kathy who, with a Thai mother and American father, lives in two different worlds. Trying to fit in when she struggles with both cultures she learns to find a sense of belonging that may not look like what either culture calls itself, but is uniquely her own.

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Life After Whale: The Amazing Ecosystem of a Whale Fall by Lynn Brunelle with illustrations by Caldecott Medalist Jason Chin follows a blue whale’s enormous body to the bottom of the ocean, where it sets the stage for a bustling new ecosystem to flourish. 

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The Monarchs of Winghaven from Naila Moreira brings us Sammie, a budding naturalist, who knows of a secret and wonderful place: Winghaven, an abandoned lot in the middle of the suburbs where wildlife thrives. This beautifully written story, full of details about the natural world, includes Sammie’s field illustrations as well as real-life notes on keeping a nature journal, studying monarchs, and bird-watching.

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“Children more than ever, need opportunities to be in their bodies in the world – jumping rope, bicycling, stream hopping, and fort building. It’s this engagement between limbs of the body and bones of the earth where true balance and centeredness emerge.”

~David Sobel

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For more books for young readers click here!

Para libros para lectores jóvenes en Español haga clic aqui!

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Just Because + Just for Fun

The Cat Who Couldn't Be Bothered by Jack Kurland brings us a cat whose friends ask him if he wants to play but he doesn’t feel like it. They invite him on adventures to far-off places, but he would rather stay home. Until one day, a friend asks how he is doing, and the true reason why he’d rather do nothing is revealed. He is feeling sad.

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The Reverse Coloring Book from Kendra Norton is a totally new idea in creativity and mindfulness…with beautiful and whimsical unfinished watercolors providing a gentle visual guide for your own creativity and exploration to emerge.

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“Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

~Albert Einstein

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Please visit our online Bookshop to see our full selection of lists and titles.

Thank you for supporting local, independent bookstores! 

We love connecting with you in the shop and online.

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May you be inspired, supported, and enriched by what you find here.

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