Cracking Magic (7) – Selections

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This and the following articles should be of some help in making proper selections. Of course, it must be understood that the tricks and books I will suggest are purely my personal opinion and your taste may vary. Don’t forget, this is written with the casual performer in mind, who does not have endless time or the nerves to read them all.

Quality Books
I don’t want to degrade any authors on magic books with my humble suggestions. It is difficult writing about some of the books one likes and not feeling guilty of not having mentioned other authors. On the other hand, I will have to make some decisions and offer some material I would suggest for a starting point.

In magic, we have an astounding amount of literature and material at our fingertips. Making a selection is very difficult. Therefore, in the beginning, I suggest sticking to time proven and quality writers. When you read the books and are informed, you will notice that many times a “new” trick in a recent publication has a precursor in an older book. And most of the times, this precursor is even better than the “new” one. Digging trough the “old” books will bring some nuggets to the surface, tricks that still work today as good as they did then.

The key is that in these times, tricks were published and described only after they had been actually performed for many years for an audience (at least the majority of them). What you get with the older books is material that has proven to be workable. There are literally no pipe dreams.

When having only limited means and time to put together a working library, I would suggest first and foremost going for the “classic textbooks” of magic. If you are interested in sponge ball magic, then reading Frank Garcia’s “Encyclopedia of Sponge Ball magic” is a good start. Here you have assembled in one place some good material that will keep you busy for a long time.

The same with the classic texts on coin magic, card magic and so on. I tend to believe that the classic books like “Expert Card Technique” or “Greater Magic” were carefully written and there is a lot of advice concerning psychology and presentation in them. “Greater Magic” is still a fantastic collection of the best ideas of the best magicians at that time. Doing just the stuff out of  “Expert Card Technique” will make you shine as a card star. And the chapter about presentation is worth pure gold.

If you want to make a deep study of card magic, then probably Roberto Giobbi’s “Card College” series is the best choice. Just don’t think too much about it, because everything Roberto publishes is refined to the nth degree and you will have surefire winners in your repertoire. A very interesting read is his “Ask Roberto” eBook. He presents an excellent list of “essential reading” books and material.

A very good addendum to your archive, which you can work with on a daily basis, is Roberto’s “Secret Agenda”. In there are 365 tips, hints, ideas and wisdom. One for every day. Roberto tips priceless information there.

As you see, I tend to “encyclopedic” type of books for my archive. But it hasn’t to be the big, heavy books, there is a “smaller” way as well.

In the forties and fifties, it was popular to publish books that were collections of tricks by different authors. Book titles like “100 Tips for Magicians” and the like were quite common. Many of these tricks were extracted and reprinted from the “big” books and works. So the author did the work of selecting and searching stuff from a specific topic for you already and they are served on a golden plate for you. I love these booklets! Because almost no one is reading them anymore, the material will appear fresh and trust me, there is a ton of material that sparkles inspiration or can be adapted to modern times and used right away.

One of those is, for example, the booklet “100 Latest Tips on Tricks” by Milbourne Christopher. In there are 100 useful tips to be included into your act. Some are gags, others are extensions of known tricks and others are new tricks or handling. When reading this booklet, I found more than 20 (!) tricks and ideas that I could (and probably will) use in my work, which isn’t a bad investment at all. The booklet is only $10.00 and you can get it at Library.com.

So, go to the Lybrary.com and search for these authors (of course, there are lots more, but we have to start somewhere):

Milbourne Christopher
Jean Hugard
U. F. Grant
Peter Warlock
Hen Fetch
Roy Baker
Ken de Courcy

The material they published on various topics is very worthwhile to have a look at. Another nice thing is there are lots of ideas for the stand-up performer, an area that isn’t too well covered in these modern times, despite the fact that in the real world, what we need (and could use) mostly is an act that is suitable for an audience of about 50 to 100 spectators. There is tons of stuff for that occasions in these booklets.

Also, in former times, there have been lots of “compilations” published. You will find a lot of titles like “100 Tricks With A Thumbtip”, “100 Tricks and Ideas With A Milkpitcher” and the like. Well worth looking into these as well. Digging out the nuggets that otherwise would remain hidden.

Concerning the topic of putting an act together, a fantastic inspiration for that is a booklet by Max Holden called “Programes of Famous Magicians”. Here you find description of the acts of some famous (and not so famous) magicians of that time. A very interesting an inspiring read to get an act together. Also there is a booklet by Senor Mardo, called “The Act”. Here are some ideas and suggestions as well. The point is that these little booklets get you started somewhere. Otherwise, the search for tricks for a program could turn out to be a never-ending one …

The Selection
Now when you have some of these booklets, read through them carefully. Ideally, print them out so you can use the pencil and the colored text marker to highlight and comment the interesting stuff. Then, apply the BSL to the material. After that, put the interesting stuff into your little notebooks.

Your archive will now start to grow in no time.

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