Reddit reviews Shinto the Kami Way

This one's a good starter.

A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine is a great start for understanding shinto. Another great one is Shinto: The Kami Way. I used both for a capstone paper on Shinto in college, and they were invaluable resources.

Honestly I'm super suspicious of anything written about Japan that's not in Japanese. Everything tends to get this hyper mystical filter laid over it, because it's easy to sell people books and articles that portray Japanese people as Super Deep and Wise but Incomprehensibly Weird.

Shinto: The Kami Way was written by a Japanese scholar and translated, though, so it looks good. It doesn't seem to delve too deeply into the belief structure, it's more of a sociological look at Shinto. That's probably better, honestly, because there isn't really much in the way of a belief structure there. When I said upthread that Shinto is all about hand washing, I was only like 5% kidding.

If you can read it, then an introductory book written for a Japanese audience like Why Can't Japanese People Explain Shinto to Foreigners? is probably your best bet.

The short blurb is already a deeper education on Shinto than I ever got in my undergrad history classes:

シントウって何だろう…?
What is Shinto?
●「神道」=「アニミズム」ではない
Shinto is not animism
●戦前に「国家神道」は成立しなかった!?
「State Shinto」 didn't exist before the war!?
●「禊ぎ祓へ」は現代でも通用する
「Purification rituals」are still in common use today
●「日本語」が「英語」ともっとも違う点
The biggest difference between the Japanese and English languages
●神社や神様には「地域らしさ」がある
Shrines and Kami have the characteristics of their locations
●神道の「間」と日本建築の「間」
The gate in Shinto and the gate in Japanese architecture
●日本料理の起源
The origins of Japanese food
●日本のアニメや漫画はなぜ世界を席巻するのか
Why Japan's animation and films are sweeping the globe
●神道の「見える化」と「量子論」etc.
Shinto's 「visualization」 and 「quantum physics」etc.

Thanks for making me think a little more on this! I haven't actually read much on Shinto, I just know what I've absorbed in the eight years I've lived in Japan, so I went and ordered both of those books. I'd also encourage you to look into how Buddhism is really practiced in Japan—it's absolutely nothing like the Steve Jobsian California caricature that's fashionable in the west. A lot more fire and brimstone.