Magic books

Expert card technique
Royal road to card magic
Card control

These are 3 really good books and the information will last you years.

 

Modern Coin Magic by JB Bobo

Complete Idiot's Guide to Street Magic by Tom Ogden (you need to get this. Believe me.)

Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown

Royal Road to Card Magic by Hugard and Braue

List is in no particular order.

Have a good time mate

 

Start with Mark Wilson's Complete Course.

As for creating magic, hold off on that until you have a strong knowledge of the fundamentals. Without it, you will be wasting time that could be spent learning reinventing effects that have already been done. That is, in the time it takes you to develop on effect (which is probably already invented) you could have learned 25 effects that are probably better than what you invented.

 

Point.

Remember that, because as you go ahead with your journey, a lot of times people will tell you to be original, etc, etc. But there was never a definite, fool-proof, works for everyone manual for being ''original''.

I heard this some time back (prolly from Vinh Giang...that guy's lit.):-

When you are starting out as a chef, whose recipes do you use? Other's! You copy other chefs! Because if you don't know what you are SUPPOSED to do, you'll never be able to figure out what you WANT to do, improvise upon, improve upon.

Don't fret about using other's recipes when starting out as a magician mate.

You won't know how much salt to add unless you know that you have to add salt, in the first place.