Magic for Beginners by Harry Baron

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Magic for Beginners by Harry Baron

Postby AJ82 » Jun 21st, '06, 22:38



Magic for Beginners by Harry Baron. (Book) ISBN 0947533 583

http://www.whsmith.co.uk/whs/go.asp?isb ... fId=546330

The Effect
This book is written by Harry Barson who performed magic for over 60 years. He was a member of the Inner Magic Circle. He also owned a magic studio and manufactured apparatus or amatures and professionals so a lot of knowledge has gone in to this book.
The book starts of with card magic and moves through to close up magic, stunts and gags, mental work, miscellaneous magic, illusion magic and ends on a section about showmanship and presentation.
The book covers easy to do card tricks and coin vanishes to tricks such as the grate mail bag escape and the Chinese guillotine. There are a lot of illustrations and instructions on how to make your own propts and tricks. The stunts and gags section covers things such as balancing a glass on a £5 note.
This book has a bit of everything and it a good starting point if your interested in magic but not sure where to start. It gives you a taster in a few areas of magic.

Cost
£4.95

Difficulty
1 to 5 (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)
I say between 1 and 5 as it really depends. Some of the easy to do card / coin tricks would be a 1 but if you tried to make the Chinese guillotine your probably looking more towards a 5

Review
A good book giving a range of tricks from close up to stage magic. I especially like the section on illusions and how it actually showed you how to make items such as the Chinese guillotine and double box (although very basic pictures, no measurements). I have not tried to make such items as I read this section out of interest and decided that large illusion style of magic was not for me. The ending section on showmanship and presentation is also good as it teaches good patter technique along with other things.

Overall
I would have to give it a 8 to 9 out of 10. It is a good read and a very interesting book. Although the name of the book is magic for beginners I would not say it is totally limited to beginners and it holds some very powerful tricks along with a bit of magical history. I normally prefer DVDs but this book is in some ways, in my opinion better than a DVD.

Magic is real, just look around you, some of the most amazing things have no reason, no explanation but are very real.
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Postby Stephen Ward » Jun 21st, '06, 22:50

A very nice review. I enjoyed reading that.

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Postby AJ82 » Jun 21st, '06, 22:54

Thank you :D

Magic is real, just look around you, some of the most amazing things have no reason, no explanation but are very real.
Quote - Appreciate The Trick For What It Is!
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AJ82
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Haha.. He was my grandfather

Postby maxbaron » Jul 17th, '10, 23:06

He was my grandfather and my father illustrated that book when he was young..
I wish Harry survived longer.. I reckon I would have learnt a lot.

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Postby mark lewis » Jul 18th, '10, 02:31

I remember Harry well. In fact I used to work for him in Gamages dept store years ago when he was the department manager. He had quite a little sideline going that Gamages had no idea about as far as I know. Not only did he get his salary from Gamages he got quite a bit of revenue from a profitable little shenanigan which amused me greatly. The main supplier of the magic department was Kaymar Magic which is still running today.
Ellisdon's which was the main supplier of jokes, tricks and novelties in those days couldn't get a look in and were very baffled and indeed irritated that they couldn't get an order from Gamages. Of course the person in charge of buying was Harry. And the reason that he only ordered from Kaymar was that he owned the company! I don't think Gamages ever knew! And Ellisdons certainly didn't!

When I was a kid I got a Harry Baron book out of the library. When I finally met Harry I was in great awe of him because of the book. I kept thinking "He is THE Harry Baron!"

Of course my awe disappeared as I got to know him. I purchased my first svengali decks from him for resale. I went out to try and sell them on Ridley Road market and didn't sell a single one. I went back to Harry and asked for a refund which he very reluctantly gave me. He was highly irritated that the cards came back all grubby!

Mind you I have sold a few since then............

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