Reddit mentions: The best solid-state physics books

There are a lot of good suggestions in here, but I'm wondering if any of them are really applicable to what you want to do. An electrodynamics book like Griffiths will come at magnetism from the perspective of field and/or tensor mathematics. A solid state book like Kittel or Ashcroft and Mermin would come at it starting from a phenomenological perspective and moving into things like local moments and band structure. I'm guessing here, but it seems like what you want is more of an idea of the interaction of magnetism and materials or observable phenomena. Either of those approaches would get you there, but it wouldn't be the most direct approach and it would be a lot more work than you need to put in if that's all you want. They would also both require a lot more math than it seems like you're really comfortable with, and both topics are complex enough that physics/chemistry/MSE students struggle with them without good instructors (and sometimes even with them).

Instead of starting with any of those, I'd suggest you look at some lower level, phenomenology and observation based works. Nicola Spaldin's Magnetic Materials: Fundamentals and Applications might be a good place to start. It's pretty low level: I think a motivated undergrad could deal with it after taking a year of freshman physics, but I think that's what you want, at least to start with. It gives a good overview of different kinds of magnetism and the different kinds of magnetic materials, as well as field generation and detection.

Incidentally, if you decide to be a masochist and go with a solid state book, I think Ashcroft & Mermin is a better text than Kittel. Kittel spent 50 years and eight editions trying to fit the new developments in the field into the book without making it significantly thicker, so Ashcroft has a narrower scope but covers what it does have in more depth. I find the writing style clearer and more accessible as well.

Oh sure!

https://www.edx.org/course/plasma-physics-introduction-epflx-plasmaintroductionx

https://www.edx.org/course/plasma-physics-applications-epflx-plasmaapplicationx

These two used to be a single course back when I did them, and I can PM you my notes from that course if you'd like.

As for books, I'll just link the first relevant google result I find:

http://www.springer.com/de/book/9783319223087 this was neat

https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-State-Matter-Introduction-Science/dp/0750307404 this was okay

https://books.google.pl/books/about/Plasma_Physics_via_Computer_Simulation.html?id=S2lqgDTm6a4C&redir_esc=y I'm still trying to get through this one.

The other well known book is ashcroft and mermin http://www.amazon.com/Solid-State-Physics-Neil-Ashcroft/dp/0030839939 which has better reviews but still isn't regarded as amazing or anything

http://www.amazon.com/The-Oxford-Solid-State-Basics/dp/0199680779/ref=pd_sim_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=0PR4FET4HSKRNNR4Z1AR seems promising by the reviews.

A couple common undergrad/early grad texts are Marder and Ashcroft and Mermin . Try and read some review articles about some of the topics you hear about. This is an interesting article about the unique perspective of cond matter and why it might be important