Magic Book Reviews?

Nov 20, 2007
4,410
6
Sydney, Australia
Question. Is it just me or is it really hard to find reviews of magic books?

It's something that's been bothering me for a while. I haven't been able to find reviews on even the more popular ones, and as for the obscure ones, don't even try looking.

So, uhh... Anyone know of where I could find good magic book reviews in general?
 
Dec 14, 2007
817
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For reviews of books, common and obscure, seek out issues of genii or magic magazine. For online reviews, go to mylovelyassistant.com. For really obscure reviews, find a used magic book dealer and ask for issues of epoptica.
 
Nov 20, 2007
4,410
6
Sydney, Australia
Thanks Brad that's great. Just wondering, is there any way to search the index of the magazines or something to buy a specific issue? I'll definitely check them out though, that's really helpful, thanks a lot.


Camel, I've had this problem with just about all books I've looked at.

Specifically though, books from Wonder, Ascanio, Vernon, Tamariz and Carney come to mind amongst many, many others. All I usually get is "yeah they're great!" Well yeah, thanks for that -_- you know what I mean?
 
Mar 8, 2008
276
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New Hampshire
Sorry, My small collection of books don't include anything by them. I think that since magic DVD's are coming out people are reviewing more of those because they are easier to review and there are more things to critique. Personally, I have many more DVD's than good books. When I say good books I am not ruling out other books that are beginner magic books that you buy at standard book stores, I mean books that have been more recently published like Smooth Operations by Kevin Ho for example. I still use tricks from beginner books, though.
 
Nov 20, 2007
4,410
6
Sydney, Australia
That's exactly the problem. I have nothing against Kevin Ho, in fact I think he's remarkable. And not to pick on you, either. But the notion that the book knowledge of the average magician only extends to books such as Smooth Operations is shocking. I am talking neither of "beginner" books - that you find at average bookstores - nor books published in the past few months and highly advertised by companies such as D&D.

For example, anyone who's reading this, name a Garcia book. No, don't read on, try and actually name a Garcia book before you continue.


















If you just tried to think of books by Danny Garcia (and I love that guy), you've just proved my point.

Again, I'll make clear that I have nothing against any person or company in this post. But many magicians have no idea what a "good book" actually entails. Which is part of what I was alluding to initially. Many magicians' knowledge, even here, of books goes something like this: Royal Road. Card College. TOoC. The Paper Engine. Expert Card Technique. Erdnase Bible. Smooth Operations. Encyclopedia of Playing Card Flourishes. And that's just what people know. How many have actually read them? Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with any of the books on that list. It's shocking, though.

I'll stick to my books (once I do some research and find some opinions of them), and this is a huge reason why I agree with Brad's post about vision theft in the other thread.
 
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Dec 14, 2007
817
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praetoritevong ,

Glad I could help. As to the books you listed, "They are all great." But seriously, what specifically do you want to know. I have (and have read) all of those titles. (And yes, they are great.)

I am curious though (and please do not take this as an attack - I completely appreciate your point of view and am thrilled to see it expressed) when you mention obscure books - do you mean to suggest Wonder, Carney, and Tamariz are obscure?

Again, I am not attacking you AT ALL, I just find this very interesting - what does the "theory 11 generation" know when they think of books? (Your Garcia reference is not lost on me.) What do the members of the forum (realizing there are exceptions) consider to be the core texts of magic, what do they consider obscure?

Anyone?

Brad

p.s. Ask my anything about any book. If I know it, I am happy to share.
 
May 19, 2008
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manchester
I guess im one of the "new" genaration of magic, lol.

I think the core texts are...

genaral would be the amatuer magicians handbook (I love that book)

cards would be royal road to card magic

coins would be bobos book

mentalism would be practicle mental effects (theo anneman) and 13 steps (by corianda)

I havnt heard you heard of carney of tamariz, thats because I havnt been in magic for long (1/2 years) and because their not advertised very well (I think), I also think they should advertise "classics" on this site - like they have a special aticle type thing, they have one on dan and dave for card magic.
maybe you (anyone really) could make an article about books that are *obscure*? that would be cool :)
 
Sep 3, 2007
2,562
0
Europe
Question. Is it just me or is it really hard to find reviews of magic books?

It's something that's been bothering me for a while. I haven't been able to find reviews on even the more popular ones, and as for the obscure ones, don't even try looking.

So, uhh... Anyone know of where I could find good magic book reviews in general?

I have reviews on several books- include a massive one on The Royal Road to Card Magic.
 
Nov 20, 2007
4,410
6
Sydney, Australia
http://www.talkmagic.co.uk/ftopic20357.php lots of reviews their...

and isnt "next" a book by garcia? well its a pdf so maybe its not but its kinda like a book?

You completely proved my point. I was not talking about Danny Garcia at all. I love Danny but he hasn't published a book. As Shanku correctly stated:

I think he wanted you to think of a different Garcia... e.g. Frank Garcia.

I was indeed talking about Frank Garcia - my point being that how many people instantly thing of him?

I guess im one of the "new" genaration of magic, lol.

I think the core texts are...

genaral would be the amatuer magicians handbook (I love that book)

cards would be royal road to card magic

coins would be bobos book

mentalism would be practicle mental effects (theo anneman) and 13 steps (by corianda)

I havnt heard you heard of carney of tamariz, thats because I havnt been in magic for long (1/2 years) and because their not advertised very well (I think), I also think they should advertise "classics" on this site - like they have a special aticle type thing, they have one on dan and dave for card magic.
maybe you (anyone really) could make an article about books that are *obscure*? that would be cool :)

It's not so much advertising - Next isn't advertised anywhere that I've seen, and yet you know of it. It's not about advertising, it's more about our ability to seek. As Brad said in another thread, these are there for people to find, not up for people to pounce on after someone makes it famous - I was merely making the point of this trend.

praetoritevong ,

Glad I could help. As to the books you listed, "They are all great." But seriously, what specifically do you want to know. I have (and have read) all of those titles. (And yes, they are great.)

Thanks Brad, I'll address your post in chunks...

I'll be completely honest, my interest in magic on this deeper level has only come very recently, and many of these books are on my to read list rather than personally having read many of them before. So, on Vernon, I've been wanting to get Inner Card Trilogy and Ultimate Secrets of Card Magic - and yes, I read your review of the latter :) Is this a good starting point for Vernon or is there another one I should start off with (A friend of mine who has studied Vernon recommended this). I've been looking to start off with one of Classics or 67' of Jenning's work, and I was wondering what you thought of them (I've researched and found some arguments by Kaufman in favour of 67'). As far as Tamariz goes, I was wondering what you'd suggest after Mnemonica, and the two Ascanio books in English I've heard are good as well? I have a fair few others (so much to choose from), but I think I'll stop there for now.

Taking all these books in context of their authors' entire body of work, I realise they're still very much "starting out in x magician's work" books, but over time, I'd very much like your opinion on books to explore from there for more depth on such magicians, but I guess that'll come in time - you know what I mean? For every one of these magicians, there's always one or two slightly more well known books of their massive repertoires, like my examples above or say Cardician by Marlo, which are often an 'overview' of 'best of' type collection on said author, and then it branches out from there... In time I'm sure I will have many more questions about further reading and so forth.

I know I've mentioned quite a few things, so feel free to selectively mention some and just make brief comments or whatever you'd like :)

I am curious though (and please do not take this as an attack - I completely appreciate your point of view and am thrilled to see it expressed) when you mention obscure books - do you mean to suggest Wonder, Carney, and Tamariz are obscure?

Again, I am not attacking you AT ALL, I just find this very interesting - what does the "theory 11 generation" know when they think of books? (Your Garcia reference is not lost on me.) What do the members of the forum (realizing there are exceptions) consider to be the core texts of magic, what do they consider obscure?

Anyone?

Brad

p.s. Ask my anything about any book. If I know it, I am happy to share.


No attack at all taken, I see what you're asking. Well, am I suggesting they're obscure... In a sense, perhaps. By obscurity I imply only the connotation of "lesser known" - a judgment of the magical awareness of the community at large (notwithstanding exceptions). Of course, I believe many people on here will at least have seen the name "Carney" or "Wonder" discussed in shape or form. They were "great magicians". And that's about all many know. But how many have actually investigated their works, or considered buying one of them? This number is considerably fewer, the number who have looked up "Book of Wonder" at MJM or looked to L&L Publishing or anything like that. In this sense I feel that their works can be considered at least relatively obscure.

Books such as Carneycopia fare better than others, having been up on the D&D website - but since when does popularity of old books rely on being up on D&D? And again, I do love D&D, and what they do for magic. But it's a pretty stupid condition for being known. I'm not saying I'm any better, in fact I'm the first to admit the desire for investigation and research has been prompted by my distinct lack of knowledge.

Overall, the lack of research knowledge and appreciation of the lives influence and works of magicians such as Tamariz et al., for the purposes of this arena, in my opinion makes them, sadly, obscure. And these are some of the better known "obscure ones".

But whilst Mnemonica, Carneycopia et al. do occasionally make an appearance, they are not by any means considered "core" or "important" in any way by most.

Brad I'm not sure if you've seen it, but on Andi Gladwin's blog, he has a rather funny series of "magical facts" - http://www.andigladwin.co.uk/blog/ - if you look at the fourth one down - "True Readers of Strong Magic" - I think that more or less sums up True Readers of the books we have talked about (and I do apologise for my lack of variety in my use of 'overview' type book examples) such as the above. I would add that "People who know of these books" are somewhere roughly equal to "People that say they've read it". Overall, a pretty cynical view, but not entirely incorrect either I think.

As far as "core" texts we would know... Royal Road, Card College, Art of Astonishment. Paper Engine, Totally Out of Control. By Forces Unseen. From my experience, these are the mostly commonly mentioned books, pretty much without exception to any other book, unless I've missed something. I'm not sure how I would define what is considered "obscure". I think many people know of the achievements of these magicians - usually, as I mentioned above, many will have heard these names and be able to recognise them, along with the notion that they were considered great. Given this, I feel that most members here would not deem any of them "obscure" because of this notion they have picked up along the lines - they simply show no interest in investigating them.

I hope I have made sense in this long post - just come from an exam so my brain is probably still recovering! I will gladly clarify anything which is unclear.
 
Dec 14, 2007
817
2
Ok, based on what you have written I am going to suggest two books.

First, get Performance of Magic by Eugene Burger. Cynics have quipped that Eugene (who is a good friend of mine) has written the same book 5 times. If that is so, this is the best version of it. There are some great tricks in here, but more importantly Eugene gives you a lot to think about - things that many magicians overlook but real people don't.

For your "method/trick" study, buy Carney's Book of Secrets. Book of Secrets is the perfect beginners magic book that no beginner would ever understand. The tricks are super great and the lessons they convey are very important. A beginner would get bogged down in the tricks, hence what I said above. But this is a great book that covers a wide range of ideas using polished, thought out tricks.

http://www.carneymagic.com/store/secrets.html

Start there, then we can move forward.

Brad
 
I'm not saying I'm any better, in fact I'm the first to admit the desire for investigation and research has been prompted by my distinct lack of knowledge.

Which is as it should be and you shouldn't be ashamed. I'm a hobbyist and have been 'into' magic (whatever that means) for about 4 years and I'm constantly on the hunt. I have a voracious appetite for anything magic related and it's those moments when you are led somewhere by a direct review or via a 'stumble-upon-it' kind of approach and discover something so spell-binding that no matter how old you are, you smile like a little kid, that really keep me interested.

With each passing year my knowledge of sleights, tricks, magicians, history and the like grows and grows and with it my desire to know and understand more. Is it true that most of this is fueled by simply having to know the methods to tricks that astound me? Yes, but with that comes all the baggage and the baggage is where the real magic is to be found.

So I'm with you...my distinct lack of knowledge is what fires me up...and that's no bad thing as at least we both admit it and don't think we're authorities on a subject we're clearly not...as so many do.


Ok, based on what you have written I am going to suggest two books.

First, get Performance of Magic by Eugene Burger. Cynics have quipped that Eugene (who is a good friend of mine) has written the same book 5 times. If that is so, this is the best version of it. There are some great tricks in here, but more importantly Eugene gives you a lot to think about - things that many magicians overlook but real people don't.

For your "method/trick" study, buy Carney's Book of Secrets. Book of Secrets is the perfect beginners magic book that no beginner would ever understand. The tricks are super great and the lessons they convey are very important. A beginner would get bogged down in the tricks, hence what I said above. But this is a great book that covers a wide range of ideas using polished, thought out tricks.

http://www.carneymagic.com/store/secrets.html

Start there, then we can move forward.

Brad


Ahhh...Burger. I've been meaning to hunt down some stuff for an age but i always get side-tracked by the latest and greatest. I'm gonna' make a note of that book and get out my credit card.


Cheers Brad.



Rabid
 
Although this post might sound absurd, its not.

I got a tip from Brad couple of months ago, he turned me into a certain source, I saved up and bought it, his advice was right on the mark. The source taught me some damn good stuff and even more with serious study, tricks and otherwise.

My point from all this? Brad's awesome. Since he's giving you advice here, my post seemed relevant.

Cheers,
~ Feras
 
Nov 20, 2007
4,410
6
Sydney, Australia
Thanks for the support guys - FYI I PM'd him with thanks and I do indeed plan on following his advice. Rabid - I can totally associate with what you said, thanks for that. Medifro - not at all absurd, thanks for your support of Brad's advice.
 
May 19, 2008
448
0
manchester
I love the whole idea of magic books that like 100 people know about it and have really awsome magic in it that no-one knows about.

its a shame I NEVER have money :( but if someone could pm a list of awsome authors and awsome books I would be very happy :)
 
Dec 14, 2007
817
2
Well, blahblah, what specifically are you interested in?

Thanks to everyone else for the kind words. Glad I could help.

B

(Just put together four new bookshelves for my library. Have to run to IKEA to get two missing pieces! Then it's time to fill them up.)
 
May 19, 2008
448
0
manchester
I love "alternative", so like books that arnt in the main stream and have some really bizzare/weird magic in them, beasicly swami mantra type stuff, exept that im 13 and I to buy it I would have to get my dad to pay on the credit card, and he would see its for 21+ only.
 
Dec 14, 2007
817
2
I have Swami Mantra. In fact, I gave a copy to a friend who has used several of the ideas in it to become one of the top college performers in the world. We tried several of the items together. They are dangerous and you could get hurt. So, knowing that you like this stuff, be careful.

The problem with a lot of the "Bizarre magic" stuff is that it is so poorly done. Most bizarre magic has never been performed, and the few pieces that have been, are awful. I was very much involved in the Bizarre movement when it regained it's popularity in the 90s. I held the first Bizarre magic event at a mainstream convention, which eventually became a regular and popular event. I was a Mystery Schooler and wrote a bit on the subject for the then snail mail based Shadow Network.

And even though I loved so much of it, I can tell you most of it is unperformable.

However, there are some great ideas in that literature, and if you are willing to work on them, they could be made commercially/dramatically viable.

So, where should you look:

Probably the best source for lots of general weirdness is the Invocation magazines. Originals can be found, but the entire series has been reprinted by Richard Kaufman. You'll find seance stuff, mindreading, geek material, everything.

For the king of the weird, Tony "Doc" Shiels is your man. He'll make your head spin. One of magic's great "characters." But Tony lives the part. Can you convince reporters you raised sea serpents from Britain's waterways in order to have a meeting?

For a good into text to the Bizarre, check out Burger's Strange Ceremonies. It's definitely has his personal slant to the topic, but there is a lot of material about other performers and that can give you a path to follow.

I once published a beginner's bibliography for Bizarre. If I can find it, I'll post it. Also, for my symposium, Craig Snader put together a fairly comprehensive bibliography. If you want bizarre books, that's where to look.

Brad
 
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