Magic Tricks

This is a kind of back-handed criticism. The information in this book is very sound and I have no issue with the ideas themselves, just that they could have been laid out in a more exciting and graspable way. Virtually every illustration of the different points is a card trick, and that gets pretty old pretty quick for me. How much more exciting it would be if he could show examples from coins, ropes, kid's shows...

And some of this is already intuitive for those who actually do magic. "Vary the methods within a multi-phase routine...create distance (time, space, etc.) between the 'move' and the effect..." Yes, he breaks it down into brilliant detail, but it was more than I needed. I agree it is important to have deception in routines. But that has to be there along with entertainment, which is usually the missing factor for most shows I see performed. Granted, this book didn't promise to be about entertainment, so perhaps I have nothing to complain about.