Practitioners Books

THE WICCAN PATH by Rae Beth consists of a series of letters Rae Beth wrote to two friends who wanted to know more about Wicca. Her correspondence is not very different from exchanges I have had with various friends over the years -- a Christian Scientist friend who explained her religion to me via phone calls and letters, a Quaker friend who explained her religion to me over various meetings for coffee, and a Morman male friend I saw for over a year when I was younger (and did not marry) who explained his religion to me.

I read voraciously about religion--histories, documents, letters, books, and other material. Although I was raised Christian in a Protestant-Catholic household, my mother and maternal grandmother attended seances every Friday night, and my maternal grandfather was descended from Dutch Jews. Knowledge of my family's mixed religious affiliations caused me a great deal of concern when I was a child because I was sent to Catholic schools where I was taught only RCs could enter heaven. I have tried to understand other religions ever since.

Like other reviewers of Rae Beth's book, I have read Scott Cunningham, Raven Grimassi, Silver Ravenwolf, and many others and I enjoy what they have written. Rae Beth is the first Wicca who "spoke" to me on a personal level however. These days, I find myself growing closer and closer to this ancient system of beliefs. Wicca is a lovely practice that operates from the perspective of attraction, not promotion.

I can continue to celebrate the holidays I grew to love as a child -- Father Christmas or Santa Claus; the Green Man (who may be Robin Hood or the Holly King); The Lady (Mary for me and Kuan Yin for others); Jesus (the Lord and the great Magus -- a Hindu friend tells me she believes Jesus one of the incarnations of Shiva); the Great Spirit; and all my saints who are not lost including Saint Anthony who has helped me recover more than one lost thing and who probably had previous incarnation as some deity or other. I believe in a higher power, and I don't think anyone has the final answer (well Shirley McLean may).

This is a wonderful soothing book written by a gentle soul who is fully in touch with her own nature and the natural world around us. The best part of Rae Beth's discussion for me is in part two where she explains how to go into a trance. As she puts it, you can do it many ways, even with rosary beads.

I had so many epiphanies while reading this book, it was just amazing, especially the passages about The Holy Grail, and Faerie blood still running through the veins of some.
The way the book is written made me feel like the letters were addressed to me. It seemed very personal.
I go back to the book often for reference, as it contains much good information which I have hilighted, and also suggestions for rituals.

This book doesn't go through the typical Wicca 101 type books, it doesn't offer spells nor does it tell you everything about Wicca. It offers the knowledge of one woman as she relays her beliefs via written letters to two people interested in Wicca. It's a very good book.

Writen in old fashioned style. Containing letters to a subject who wants to learn of Wicca. Rae Beth gives alot of good helpful information, and uses a unique way of doing it. This book kept my interest, and years later, I would still highly recommend it!

This book is set up in an interesting way: the 'chapters' consist of letters from the author to two (and then one) aspiring witches. While they all had good information in them, it wasn't what I was expecting.

A lot of what Ms. Beth gives us is her own personal Sabbatt celebrations. While it was interesting to see what kind of symbolism she uses, and it was helpful in forming my own Sabbatt rituals, this book sat on my bookshelf gathering dust for a long while until I felt that I had enough basic knowledge to actually cast a formal circle and do a Sabbatt ritual.

I'd say this book is for intermediate beginners, not those who are just beginning on the path. Although, it does take you through the wheel of the year quite nicely and it really could help to open someone's eyes as to what is going on in the natural world during the year. This is not the first book to start with.

The book arrived in a timely manner in excellent condition! I was very impressed with the expedient service. My previous purchase was frustrating, but I decided to give you guys one more chance and I was pleased with the outcome. A lot of good information to use in the clinical setting and as preparation for certification boards. Thanks!

I used this book to study for the ANCC FNP certification exam (and passed). I found the book to be helpful in studying. Each chapter/section is concise and the review questions are helpful. I would have liked the topics organized by body systems instead of alphabetically. This book will be helpful in clinical practice as well.

I studied this review book from front cover to back cover. I used the CD that came with the review book and it was very helpful to practice the test questions. I also studied with the Margaret Fitzgerald review book and found that it was not as well organized as this Pamela Stinson Kidd book. I passed my boards on the first try. Study hard, be prepared and good luck!

We all learn differently, and I liked this set-up. There were tons of questions and my CD worked well. I especially thought the practice tests were helpful and prepared me for sitting in front of a computer screen for a few hours. I passed the FNP boards without a problem!

I spent weeks studying from this book and taking all the practice tests. However, when I took the exam today I was surprised that the content of the exam was not adequately covered in this review manual! I feel like much of the time that I put in was wasted since I was focusing on the wrong material.

Another oddity is that the book is primarily organized alphabetically. Each individual chapter is clear and well-organized. However, organizing the chapters alphabetically instead of by body system is somewhat illogical....while it does alleviates boredom to skip from "tendinitis" to "testicular masses" to "thyroid disease," it would make more sense in relating different diseases to one another to group them by body system.

Utilizing the CD ROM to take the practice tests was very helpful, but I was disappointed that so many of the practice tests contain the same questions. So while it initially appears that there are many practice tests to utilize, it is really the same questions being repeated in different tests. Had I not been getting so close the deadline of my scheduled test date I would have purchased additional review questions from another author.

I did not examine any other FNP Certification review guides so I do not have any basis of comparison, but overall I feel disappointed that the content of this book did not make me feel adequately prepared for my exam today.

I came to this book with high hopes after having read much of Fabian Pascal's writing on the Web, which is very specific in calling out the many weaknesses of contemporary database practice and much less specific when it comes to strategies for dealing with those weaknesses. Unfortunately, the writing in this book is much like his writings online.

Pascal is clearly a seasoned professional and also someone who understands the relational model well. However, his frustration with the current state of the art bleeds over into this book, and is unhelpful. I now very clearly understand that SQL is incapable of dealing with a truly relational view of data, and that SQL (and by extension almost all contemporary DBMSes) is flawed and illogical in many ways, but there's only so much that I, as a database designer and software developer, can do with that information. In many cases, only a change in phrasing would have been necessary: I think the book would have been much more useful if it had been written prescriptively, as a "style guide" or best practices manual (DON'T use NULL. DO normalize your relations to at least 3NF) with his impassioned critiques of current technology provided as rationales for his guidelines.

Also, there's more than a whiff of the amateur to the presentation in this book. Aside from the baffling reprints of web pages included as appendices to the first chapter, he recycles exhortations across chapters and reuses the same examples over and over (down to the same explanatory text), without necessarily explaining what's different about this usage from all the others. Add to that a large, wide text face and the book, not particularly long at 256 pages, starts to feel significantly padded.

Most interested parties would be much better served by C.J. Date's excellent "Database In Depth". As it is, Pascal cribs heavily from Date's work (2/3 of the book's citations are credited to either Date or his frequent partner Hugh Darwen), and I can't help but feel that Date expresses the same concepts much more clearly and concisely. There's a lot of good material in this book, but it's a frustrating slog to get to it.

This is a decent book to read within the first year of your dealing with relational databases. Most chapters (particularly the ones on normalization and subtypes) are at least in some way informative and will improve your clarity of thought. Whether the book is really practical is open for discussion, since it deliberately stays away from real products, pointing to their deficiencies and suggesting you should demand improvement from the vendors. OK, I'll send letters to Gates and Ellison today. But it _is_ practical in the sense of improving your thinking on the more fundamental level. Which is nothing to sneeze at, of course.

That said, the book has a strong unprofessional taste to it in terms of overall delivery: it's really half a dozen blog entries, padded with endless recaps, intros, and even a strange assemblage of web pages whose connection to the main body of text is tenuous at best (some of them aren't even referred to! Why is this junk inserted in the book? To achieve the obligatory two-hundred-page volume?) A pile of quotes from online posts, attributionless excerpts from 'trade magazines' supposedly illustrating all-pervading imbecility of the database constituency, and so on. The points the author makes are correct, but he belabours them way too much. Where one quote would suffice he gives you five.

A fair number of typos -- nothing terrible, something like the following: say, there's a picture of a table with fields, and then in the text the fields' names are different -- no big deal, but this is a technical book and small discrepancies like that really slow you down. A couple of openly ungrammatical statements (copy editing, anyone?)

Sometimes the book is illogical: for example, there's one place where a line of argument goes like this, if A and [this and that] then A: well, thanks for this refreshing tautology. Huge amount of muddled quotes from self and Date and Darwen and McGovern. Are there any other people worth reading? This smells a bit of self- and mutual promotion, to be honest; like there's this cabal of ever-crusading brothers at arms who keep dropping each others' and no one else's names.

References are very imprecise: mostly something like: "normalization is very important! ([2])". [2] what? Any particular chapter, page?

Quotes are frequently jumbled with the author's own text: you read and suddenly you see that you've been reading an excerpt from another book. Where did it start? Citations are frequently edited to fit the context to the point where square brackets make you dizzy. If a direct quote is so ill-fitting, why not simply paraphrase?

All in all, I agree with Forrest L. Norvell's and Jeff Unsal's reviews below, though unlike that last gentleman, I don't think the book is useless. I think, you probably _should_ read this book, though chances are high that if you've been working with SQL databases for a while you already know all of this from other sources. But maybe not: the author is fundamentally correct when he complains about pervasive vendor hype in the industry (and literature) and widespread ignorance and misunderstaning of fundamentals. So yes, go ahead and read it; at least check it out. Get a discounted copy; be prepared to skip the vapour and chunks of repetitious text, and figure out a number of confusing typos and sloppy narrative, but there *is* value in this book, at least for some readers. Although, if you read a fair amount of Date, you may not need this one -- and of course Date writes much, much better. Otoh (and for what it's worth), the author writes better than Celko.

Anyway, the book is flawed but worthwhile. I would like to see a new edition -- proofread, better structured, with the web pages and other stuffing removed. Maybe even a half of its current size (for my money I prefer to read a lesser amount of clearly written text than twice as much but muddled).

Enjoy.

This book has been essential in my work as a consultant and developer in the database application field. I use it whenever I need a short, easy to read, and no-nonsense summary of data management fundamentals. This book explains "how it should be", "how it often is", and "what you can do about it", making it a really perfect recommendation in many situations.

This may be the most practical database book I will ever read. While it is not wriiten for the complete novice, I would say it is important as a good second book to read (an excellent first book would be Access Database Design and Programming by Steven Roman, or Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes by Ben Forta), after you have developed a rudimentary understanding of SQL. After working with SQL in any DBMS, you will begin to run accross some of the problems he addresses in his book - inconsistent treatment of nulls, duplicate information, etc. Each chapter stands on its own, making it valuable as a reference guide, and in many instances he provides SQL workarounds for problems brought on by...SQL. Although he does lay blame at feet of current DBMS vendors for not fully implementing the relational model, he addresses the fundamental lack of knowledge on the part of practitioners. By far the best chapter is the one on normalization, particularly his discussion on the fourth and fifth normal forms.

I don't know where they came up with the "Practical Issues" part of the title. This book is painfully theoretical.

It might be OK material for academic types, but I'm a SQL DBA and have real-world problems to solve. It goes on and on with this formal language about what the data represents and examples of what can go wrong with obviously-bad table designs. Not much help here.

And instead of offering usable recommendations, the obviously-annoyed author makes worthless suggestions. For example, he suggests that instead of denormalizing for performance benefits, my best course of action is to "demand better soltions from DBMS vendors". I guess that instead of finishing my current project, I'll call Microsoft and demand a new release first.

Skip this one.



Matt

Fasten your seat belt if you aim to read and implement the suggestions in this great book.

I know Alan and have a number of his books. They all follow the same path..."say it as it is".

The book provides practical and usable tools and techniques and it doesn't matter which of them you decide to implement you'll discover that it will work when you follow the guidelines like following a recipes for baking a cake.

The only drawback is that not everyone will have the ability to implement all of the strategies because some of them take guts.

Of all the books in the Ultimate series, this is probably the one I liked least. It touches on all the topics covered in the other books but in less detail. If you are going to buy only one book in the series then this is probably the best one to buy. Otherwise, you may as well buy the others as the material is covered in all his other books in a more detailed and focused manner. I started by buying this book and only much later did I buy the others. Good buy and good value and even more so if you don't need the details and are just looking for the high level overview.

Alan Weiss tells it like it is. If you want to learn from one of the best...read EVERYTHING Alan Weiss writes! Alan's insights and experience are second to none. I personally own just about every book Alan Weiss has written. He is not only a consultant's consultant, but he is also a gifted writer as well.
Alan Weiss's advice, insights and knowledge will take years off your learning curve. This book is a must for your library.

Lenny Laskowski, Author of National Best Selling Book:
"10 Days to More Confident Public Speaking"
President of LJL Seminars(tm)

This book is a must for the consultant who wants to increase their earning potential and move their career to the next level.

It has been an invaluable resource to me personally and I have been able to apply the techniques and practices to my day-to-day work as well as to my overall career management.

After reading through a large volume of books regarding consulting I can strongly recommend this book and many of the other titles that Alan has produced over the years.

Mr. Weiss has put together quite a book full of usefull information. Much of it he has written on before, but that is not meant as a detraction. He has pulled what is most usefull out of much of his previous material and put it together into a systematic and straight-forward manual for running a successful consulting practice. While much of the advice seems 'common-sense' when you read his words, if it were truly so common he wouldn't have needed to write about it! While I may not agree with all that he has put down on paper in this book, I certainly think that there isn't a thing in it that would not be of use to many of the consultants out there today.

I am a former student of this author, and after reading her book I have found that many of the things that relate to real world living in the legal world of today are included in this book. She did a great job of presenting this information, as she is a Pagan lawyer which gives the rest of us some good insight on subjects that some of us would not otherwise have access to.

Missy

I had high hopes for this book, but I was pretty disapointed by book's end.

It's obvious to the reader that this author has (too much) experience with law by the end of the first section (she's a lawyer, and tells you so at least 5 times). The book is laden with references to 'defending yourself in court' against discrimation, but the author goes on to tell you to try to hide your religion from work and State Agencies whenever possible. Well, she doesn't say "hide" exactly, but it's damn near close (remove jewelry, don't wear a lot of makeup or be eccentric).

The book is full of common sense that makes you say "DUH!" a lot:
- It's common sense that you should not walk into an interview (courtroom, school, etc) professing your religious beliefs - I don't really think that part of the book applies to Pagan's only!
- Also, the part about The Department of Children and Families being discriminatory really bothered me. Being Pagan is no reason for your children to be taken away, and could never hold up in court if you are a great parent otherwise.
- Of COURSE you don't take your underage children to places where there's nudity or sexual contact (especially in the name of religion!).
- She spends a lot of time talking about being a "good" pagan. Basically she tells you about 15 times to bath yourself, take care of your kids, give them good food, and keep your finances in order, etc. Seriously, that applies to EVERYONE. And I don't think a person that's not taking care of their kids is going to read it in this book and have an "aha!" moment.

I didn't learn anything about being pagan from this book because, well, I'm already Pagan. You don't need a book from a condescending teacher (lawyer) telling you to bathe and clean your children to learn about the religion.

This book is getting 2 stars, however, for the section about learning more about Paganism. Although I could have found all of that information on the internet (for free), it was a nice addition to an otherwise preachy essay.

This was a quick read. I learned alot and enjoyed the book very much.

The Practical Pagan is written for those who have just discovered that they are drawn to the Path of the Wise. It also serves as a wake up call for those who have been Pagan for a while that sometimes neatness counts. Ms. Eilers reminds old timers about, and instructs newcomers in the fine art of being a good human being and what it means in real world terms to be a Pagan in the 21st Century.

Many people enter Paganism from more organized, mainstream religions where right, wrong and ethical codes of behavior are spelled out by books and by religious leaders. No such official source exists for the new witch because Paganism is an unorganized religion. Most newcomers are overwhelmed by this lack of guidance. Sometimes this lack of written rules leads many to believe that anything goes. Nothing can be further from the truth. This book helps to set the record straight.

In a friendly and teasing tone, the author guides the newcomer in exploring what exactly a Pagan is. The easily read chapters explain what it means to be Pagan, how and whether to join a coven, how to get involved in the Pagan community and how to go about choosing a specific Path. This book examines the myths about Pagans and Paganism, discusses the real world issues of coming out of the broom closet and offers some very down to earth advice on living as a Pagan in the mundane world.

There are chapters about your sex life and even one called "Help! There is no Pagan K-Mart" which discusses how and where to find all those wonderful ritual tools, clothing and accessories many Pagans are so fond of collecting. The author even reminds us that jeans and T-shirts are perfectly acceptable ritual-wear, if that's what makes you comfortable.

I found the author's humorous quips to be enchanting, but some might take offense at the repetition of the importance of being honest, forthright citizens of the world. Since I personally hold similar views about people (not just Pagans) being honorable and trustworthy people in their dealings, I found myself nodding my head in agreement. I can think of more than a handful of Pagans I'd like to see read this book and get the message that being Pagan is not a license to break laws or to justify being self indulgent.

This book is a good read and an excellent addition to a beginner's Craft library.

W. Lyon Martin Author/Illustrator of "An Ordinary Girl, A Magical Child"

I was expecting a bit more from this book and was disappointed to read many "preachy" passages like. "pagans should bathe" "pagans should keep their life in order" etc etc etc. I don't feel most people (adults) need to read and be told to bathe in a book about paganism. There are a few good tips but for the most part the author is preaching to us like our mother's would do when we were children. I recommend finding a book that spends more time explaining the history of paganism and the many different pagan cultures and beliefs. This book is more focused on wiccan and doesn't explore much into other pagan groups.

I've been a physician assistant for 13 years and was excited to read what turned out to be a well written, but very depressing account of my profession. I disagree with reviewers who think that the author's experiences are typical of physician assistants. If I would've had as many bad experiences in medicine as this guy did, I would've found another line of work.

After reading the review by the person who said there's only 30-50 pages about the PA profession in the first 260, I decided I would reluctantly purchase this book as those 50 pages were some of the few offered on Amazon about PA autobiography. In fact, that reviewer was wrong, and most of the book is about practicing as a PA. However, the author's choices about what to include seem odd. The book comes across as mostly venting about his mistreatment at the hands of various people, while he mentions only in passing attending conferences and his expertise in headache treatments. In the Acknowledgements, he mentions that he started publishing almost immediately out of PA school. Including more information about these aspects of his life would have made for a fuller picture of him as a person, a balanced view of the PA profession, and a more interesting story-line.

That said, the venting seems totally justified. In fact, the book is out-right depressing. If this book were the only information I had about the PA profession, I would probably avoid being a PA like the plague.

Also of note is the fact that the author seems to be a devout Christian, which may turn off some readers and attract others.

The writing is casual and the book is a fast read. It is easy to skim large sections and then jump back in without too much loss.

Overall, I would not recommend this book to those interested in becoming PAs. The professional experiences are a horror, and the section about the author's training is probably outdated as far as the application and decision-making process are concerned.

I found this book to keep my interest and to be very enjoyable to read. As a future PA I found the book sort of upsetting and could possibly turn many people off to the PA career path. I also found many of the author's actions to be very odd and did not agree with most of his religous/family/career choices. Even so, I really liked the book and would highly recommend it.

I laughed myself silly and then cryed with the Jones family. I think that life is sometimes stranger than fiction. I found it spellbinding. I think that Mike's ability to land on his feet at times when it seemed impossible to do so was remarkable. I would recommend for anyone (not just those in the medical field) to read as a comment how one person can overcome discouraging circumstances.

This book brought me to tears. Not because of anything related to being a P.A. Actually, about half of this book is about being part of a large, international mission. Having served with a large mission for 18 years (in some of the same locations Mike visited, actually) and gone through some of the same heartaches he and his family went through, I could really relate to the pain he experienced. It was wonderful to see that someone else had gone through it, too, and could do a good job describing what it was like. A good book for missions administrators.

Very surface coverage...at about $1.00 per page you should get more in depth analysis. Entire format of the book is very strange.

This book is very basic. The solutions book for this book is difficult to read and I did not go anywhere with it. It is probably much better for a general overview of financial shenanigans than anything. If you are a credit analyst then a much better book and much more in depth analysis (not accounting though) is Financial Statement Analysis by John J. Wild and others. Get the CD though if possible because it will help out greatly.

I'm not a financial analyst but I'm interested in analysing companies for my own investments. I found the book easy to read. It's a big eye-opener for someone who was not aware of all the accounting gimmicks that aggressive companies can play. I'm certainly a better investor now.

That being said, please note that this book won't tell you much about what you need to do to value a company and invest in it. It will help you spot troublesome companies and accounting tricks that don't look right, but after that you're on your own. You need more than this book to be a good investor, but this book is a pretty important part of being a good investor.

I needed this book for a Financial Statement Analysis class. It is a decent book, full of examples, so that makes it very interesting; however, the themes are very repetitive. It not an exciting book by any stretch, but it does have some usefulness.

in all likelihood, average investors will not get much out of this book, as average investors don't pore over 10-ks, annual reports and conduct industry analysis prior to investing (which they should!). but for those above average investors who do (read: intelligent investors, per ben graham), this book is an excellent read.

2/3 of the book deals w/ alterting the investor to some of the areas where company mgmt can play games w/ the #s in order to goose the stock price. the examples were helpful, but the insights were not exactly earth shattering for experienced investors.

however, the last 1/3 of the book, on forecasts & security analysis, is worth the price of the book. in 100pgs, you get an MBA-level text on security / credit / financial statement analysis, complete w/ ratio definitions, caveats(!), and applicability. excellent stuff for the beginning or experienced analyst, and i will doubtless refer to the last 1/3 time and again.

Great study book for class exams. Some of the questions on class exams come from this book and help you prepare for the certification. The CD is great too.

well, i passed the test after studying with this book several years ago. i took the ANCC certification exam. i do recall liking the practice questions.

I just came home from passing the AANP certification exam and I owe it to this book. I used the computer disc to generate tests and took them over and over. There was not one question on the exam that I had not seen in some form on the generated tests. If I didn't know better I would swear these authors wrote the certification exam too. When I saw other study guides I panicked as I thought I was unprepared when in fact if I had used them, I would have been unprepared. There was some outdated material but things change quickly in health care. I would recommend this book to everyone as I was very well prepared for the exam today.

I just passed my ANCC today and here are some books I wish I had in school. The following helped me to pass the ANCC because they are most like the test. First, Margaret Fitzgerald's book Nurse Practitioner Certification Examination and Practice Preparation is a great must have book for school and test prep. If you can, take her live seminar or get the CDs. Next Leik's book Family Nurse Practitioner Certification Intensive Review:Fast Facts and Practice Questions, great book, good to synthesize all of the Fitzgerald info. The Hollier/Wirfs book: Certification Prep Exams Practice Test s and Questions with Rationales 4th ed is a great prep for questions, don't bother buying the review book by Hollier, it is too basic. Next, make SURE you buy the Family Nurse Practitioner Certification Review by Zerwekh and Claborn. This is the only review book I could find that has a CD rom . The CD is almost like the actual test and some of the questions are very similar. If you start off by buying these four books you will be in good shape. Good luck on the exam!

This book has many typos. The book is a little outdated. There are some new and important guidelines that are not addressed or incorrect in this book. I do not recommend this book.

Rev. Robert Lee Ellison writes this book trying to reach out and teach beginners. Unfortunately, he's not very effective. I believe that he has the knowledge, but was unable to write it on the page. The book could have been a lot more informative and could have explained things a lot better. The reader doesn't get a true sense of what the druids believe nor exactly how they practice. There's a lot of history from selected texts that make the ideas unclear.

Interesting fantasy. The actual druidic beliefs are unknown since they left no written accounts of their ceremonies & beliefs.

I did enjoy this books section on the Druid holidays and ritual. Although the ritual format is a tad dry, it gives many solitary practitioner's a starting point, which I'm sure was the author's intention. The reason I give it only three stars is because the rest of the book was laid out and organized kind of poorly, and I didn't walk away from this book with a huge amount of new information. It also covers only the ADF perspective, which is one of many. I would recommend reading it though, if you are interested in ADF style Druidry.

I found this book to be quite narrow in its perspective of Druidry, and if I was new to the study of the Druid path, I think it might have even turned me away. I feel that Ellison promotes his style of practice as a doctrine - that this is "the best" way to do everything. I also found his presentation of historic Celtic lifestyles, such as homosexuality and polyamory to be interesting, but inappropriately placed at the very beginning of the book. I am not new to these lifestyles by any means, but it almost gave a feeling like he was recruiting/promoting them. I don't think of the ADF as a sex cult, but presenting this as early as he did, with several links included, made me wonder.
If you are looking for an entry-level book on the modern revival druid movement, I think you would gain more unbiased information in a more readable format from Greer's "The Druidry Handbook".
Many blessings on your quest.

This book is very good one concerning the Druid outlook, and the personal keltic relationship one has with Earth-Worship.I would use it in addition to your Druid knowledge already.It's an interesting look into one man's Keltic journey and his own credo concerning Druidry.It's not the weightiest book on the solitudinarian Druid topic,yet it's a good companion book.This druid high-priest has not handed-down a "venire facias" ,allowing an ADF clerical review of this unique work.Yet,I think such a study, by the druid sacerdotalists, would approve of its publication 100% .Good book! -Updated-Dec.17.06.+ I would also say that this book is by a Southern Anglo-Irish gentelman ,who has a profound keen interest and sound understanding of 'Druidry'.There are not that many personal accounts about the 'Solitary Druid' out-there.This is a fine story,albeit somewhat hastily organised.People who mock it,haven't tried reading it first.When is 'Ian Corrigan' writing his book,and if he is what will the title be? Ian does indeed have some useful booklets published,www.rosencomet.com + Bright Blessings for Yule!

If this book was titled "A Wiccan Like Me" it would have made more sense. Overall it was a good book to promote Wiccan pride and a nice read concerning the lives of Wiccan Witches. And I did get some nice insight into some of the more popular Wiccan authors. But if you are a Witch but not a Wiccan you may be disappointed at the heavy amount of "Why I became Wiccan" segments in the different chapters. Yet, each person's story was a wonderful read and no matter what religion you follow, if you are a Witch you can identify with the growth challenges the Wiccan Witches have endured. But for the record, not all Witches are Wiccan.

I thought this was really a good book with lots of great stories about today's witches. I am fairly new to paganism and I had read a couple of Knight's other books and really like them. I wondered about how she started writing books and practicing Wicca so I bought this book. I was happy I did. The stories are fascinating and really gave me lots of hope. I recommend this book to all pagans who want to know how these authors began in Wicca and how they started writing books on it. You will really like this book. It's a great book about the courage it takes to do what you believe in.

When i got the book the first parts of the book were very interesting, however, had problems of the author talking about the so called "mainstream" towards the craft, which was kinda sick, cause after reading books from authors that she interviewed its really hard to believe in what they say. The true interviews that enjoyed the most were the ones by Trish Telesco (gotta root for the home town hero :) ), Raven Grimassi, Raymond Buckland, and Lady Sabrina and many others, cause these folks truly write in what they say in thier books.
The ones that i had to roll my eyes up and say "whatever" were authors she interviewed like A.J.Drew (cause after "wicca for couples", you cannot believe anything this guy says anymore), Phyllis Currot (which her book of shadows was a really great book, her lack of ethics in "witch crafting" were awful) and last, but, not least of the worst of the interviews Silver Ravenwolf (just read her books and you'll know why).These folks dont truly live by thier own words, instead, they either point the blame towards what is wrong with wicca..like the reader is stupid or something or they tell you how wicca "should be" and think that you should do it this way, cause thier way is the right way..thinking that the reader doesnt think for them self, this is what some of the interviewed authors (the worst ones she interviewed anyways) believe in the books that they write only in hopes that you will too. Anyways, i wouldn't bother with this book unless you want endless hours of "how i found out that i was a witch..ummmm i lit a match!" or something stupid like that, save your money and buy something better.

A different kind of book, 'A Witch Like Me' is a collection of biographies from some of the most influential Author/Witches today. Sirona Knight has chosen 14 'Witches', all of whom follow a path specific to themselves, asked each of these authors 20 questions and put together a very insightful look at some of the movers and shakers of the written Craft path.

While many of the '20 questions' were actually multipart questions and there are much more than '20 questions', and in many instances the authors did not exactly answer each and every one of them, each author did give a good overview of the material asked. The editing blends these questions together to give us a narrative from each of the authors, resembling more of a story than an interview.

The authors covered includes Sirona's personal story, as well as Dorothy Morrison, Trish Telesco, A. J. Drew, Phyllis Currot, Ray Buckland and Marion Weinstein to name a few. The list is impressive.

Reading each story, we come away with a bit of each author, a little background, some impressive moments in their lives, their personal beliefs, their visions and how they feel about today's Craft movement.

The diversity of the authors chosen gives a variety of impressions, and while not all these authors will speak to everyone, I believe there is something for everyone in this little book. Not everyone is going to find each and every author exciting nor even interesting, but these are stories that will appeal to many.

'A Witch Like Me' offers inspiration, validation and positive affirmations. An interesting look at some of the authors in our community. boudica

This book was really helpful and changed my life when I read it. I was always curious about Wicca, and I seemed to be drawn to it for a lot of years. Knight answered a lot of the questions I had, and reading her story and the other stories really showed me that I definitely needed to follow the Wiccan path. Check this book out yourself if you are interested in Wicca.