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The effect

Magic for Dummies book by David Pogue, boasts “over 90 easy-to-perform tricks using everyday items like money, silverware and playing cards!” and “Includes favourite tricks from 35 top professionals magicians” Also Lance Burton is quoted on the front saying “A book that all magicians of any age and level of experience will cherish and refer to for years to come”

Cost

I got this as a Christmas present, The RRP is £18.99 but you can get it for £9.49 here
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Magic-Dummies-s ... 842&sr=1-1

Difficulty: 1-2
(1=Easy to do, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used,
4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)

This is a book aimed at beginners so most of the effects in here are pretty easy.

Review

The author is joined by a collective of magicians including Jeff McBride, Johnny Thompson and Lance Burton amongst others. For the purpose of this book they are known as the advisory pantheon and contribute tricks. There’s an introduction on each at the start and their tricks are credited in the trickography at the back
Also included sprinkled throughout the book are advice and anecdotes on the fundamentals of magic as well as icons informing you of needing to do prep work, misdirection, acting etc next to each trick point to enhance the effect.
The book is 369 pages long, 18 chapters in all but the last 4 are to do with advice and history and magic events in history.
My favourite chapters in this book are the ones on cards and building your own card trick which contains both forces and reveals and the chapter on mentalism.
I particularly enjoyed the torn and restored toilet paper effect in chapter 14, “Don’t show me the money” in chapter 3 where the magician puts down three $1 dollar bills and one $20 dollar bill on the table and turn his back and the spectator switches the bills and then the magician tells them to keep taking bills off the table until there’s only one left which is the $20) I thought that was fun, same with “give me a ring something – and a string” where the magician hooks a ring on a looped string and with a couple of twists he manages to pull the ring off the string even with both ends wrapped around the spectators thumbs. I decided to skip a lot of this book because I didn’t like the tricks because I didn’t think they were real magic but I’ve gone into more detail about that below.

Overall

I would recommend it for beginners only who want to get something easy to get started with as not to put them off magic but unfortunately this book did because a lot of the stuff included are more gags than magic or tricks that are really easy to figure out or are impractical but there are a few chapters which I did enjoy and a few more tricks from other chapters I enjoyed as well but I didn’t think these justified the price of the book, I probably wouldn’t have bought this book if I hadn’t got it as a present, however it did give me plenty of ideas and taught me the basics of magic.
3/10

I agree with your summary of the book. I got this when I was first starting out in magic and thought it was ok; like you say, there are a few gags and jokes in the book which I don't really care for. Definitely not worth the RRP of £19-odd, in my opinion, but typically for a Dummies book, it is quite an enjoyable and humorous read.

Check my review index for an existing review on this book... http://www.talkmagic.co.uk/ftopic1759.php

I disagree with the review. This book does have some very strong effects in it. Perhaps they are even too good for the general public.

In my opinion its a very good introduction for a beginner and thats how it should be rated. for a beginner i would rate it 9/10 (the amateur magicians handbook having 10/10)

@reviewer...if it taught you the basics of magic then it has fulfilled its purpose. why such a low rating?

greets

Most reviews of the book are positiv. I personally agree with the negative one here.
I got this book to start with magic and I didn't. Years later I made a second try with the Royal Road and Wilsons Complete Course and those beginners book are simply on another level than the Dummy-book. It includes some nice gags but nothing you can really use in a performance (and thats what IMHO is the reason for learning magic).

I gave it a low score because as you said there are much better beginner books out there and it did put me off a little because some of the things in it were really dumb but maybe I was a little harsh and should have given it 5/10

I got this for my daughter when she was about twelve and expressed a (passing) interest.

OK, you can call me Percy Pedant, but I do have an instinctive dislike of the 'for Dummies' concept due to its failure to differentitiate between stupidity and ignorance. However, I was pleasantly suprised by this. There are some strong effects here, and quite a lot of the sort of filler material of gag/fun stuff things that you might used between tricks. The writing style is quite relaxed, without overdoing the folksy feel that could be a problem.

All in all, about a 7 out of 10.

Incidentally, my daughter decided that her future lay in the audience side of things. Unusually, she really preferred not to know how things were done.