 Hey everybody, welcome back to Magic Orthodoxy. My name is David and this is a top 10. Hey, today we're going to look at my top 10 magic books or magic compilations of all time. Okay, so top 10 list of all time. Why am I doing this? Because you guys like top 10 lists. I don't know. I guess you guys like top 10 lists. So like when you look up like videos that score really high on YouTube, people just love top 10 lists. I don't know what it is. So hey, here's my top 10. Okay, so I've done a couple of videos in the past about good magic books to get. Some of these will be repeated, some of these will be brand new, but this is just like, you know, a little list for you just to kind of give you the 411 on some really cool magic books out there. A lot of these books are going to be card magic, obviously, because that's the, you know, the direction my channel takes is card magic and mentalism. And so, but I'll have some other ones in there that are thrown in some some things that are fun. And let me just say, you know what? All of these books are really number one in my book. They're all number ones, really. So it's hard to put them in order and say, Oh, why did you put that in as eight and not as six? Like, you know what, I think these are all awesome. Okay, these are all awesome. So how about we just say there's these are 10 books, 10 books, I recommend. All right, you want to see what they are? Let's go. Coming in at number 10, Mark Wilson's complete course of magic. I've got the big one. Okay, I got the big hardback edition. There's been a smaller paperback released since this one. But this was one of the very first magic books I ever bought with my own money. I went into a magic store. My friend, Steve owns the shop, and I was looking for something new. And he said, Hey, you know, what's your what's your magic book shelf look like? And I was like, Oh, it's pretty pretty dismal. And he's like, dude, you should get this. It's like really good. This is a really great introductory course to just everything magic. So there's card magic, rope magic, silk magic, stage magic, mentalism, tricks with numbers, all kinds of stuff. This is a great place to start. I think this is a easy must have for any magician looking to build his library. All right, so coming in at number nine, Roberto Gaiobi's card college light series. Roberto put out three of these books. There's light, lighter and lightest. Okay, and they're all dedicated to card magic, all dedicated to self working card magic. Now, personally, I think these books are amazing. They're awesome. Totally would recommend them to anybody who's in the card magic. Don't write these off just because they're self working tricks. Don't write these off just because they're easy tricks. Roberto puts these in little groupings of three so that you could perform these in in little killer stutter routines. Well worth your money. Totally awesome books. Definitely belong in your bookshelf. Number eight, the encyclopedia of card magic from Gene Huggard. If you can't tell from the cover, this is probably my favorite card magic book of all time. This is all creased up and wrecked. Like this has just been loved to death. This is one of my very first card magic books. I think my dad got this for me originally, and it has everything in it. So it has magic with gas cards, stripper decks, spangali decks, number tricks, mentalism, self working tricks, knucklebusters, whatever you need. This is a great volume. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tricks in here. You could never learn all these tricks in one lifetime. This is more than enough magic for any one person. This is a great, great book. Number seven, Skarni on card tricks by John Skarni. As you can tell, this is one of my more newer books. I haven't really busted this one open and gotten its full value yet. But the great thing about this book is there's a lot of classic effects in here. So you're going to find Houdini's card on the ceiling. You're going to find Blackstone's card trick without cards. You're going to find Carlisle's piano card trick, Merlin Burrell's quickie card deal, and tons more. You're going to find John Skarni's drunken poker deal on here, the knockout card trick, and others from his repertoire. Things that have fooled some of the world's leading magicians. So again, this is another like, if you're into card magic, this is one of your bibles. Card magicians, this is one of the go-tos that they recommend time and time again. Still widely available, still in print, and you can still easily find this on Amazon or any one of your magic online retailers. Coming in at number six, Expert Card Technique from Gene Huggard and Frederick Browley. All right, so why is this book awesome? Well, it's another paperback, okay? It's another book that's widely available at Amazon or any of your favorite magic retailers. This book is awesome because it just becomes your go-to source for all your questions. Like, you're reading a trick and you're like, it says, do this lift or do this move or do this pass or do this shuffle, and you're like, how do you do that? Then you pull out Expert Card Technique and you go to the beginning of the book and you start looking and saying, okay, where is that? Like, here's the table of contents, okay? You're going to have secret lifts, false deals, the sideslip, the pass, palming, false shuffles, false cuts, changes, crimps, the spectator peek, the glimpse, the jog, the reverse, all these different slides, the palm, the ferro shuffle, a whole bunch of chapters on flourishing, a whole chapter on technique, tricks with cards, the rising cards, tons of selected tricks, birds of a feather routines, more routines, one-handed card magic, the ambitious card, using double lifts and triple lifts, discoveries, mental discoveries, reverses, double face cards, stranger cards, soft working tricks, I mean it goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on, okay? This is your go-to, okay? You have your questions like, how do you do that? What's that called? Where is that found? You're going to find it in Expert Card Technique. Coming in at number five, the Royal Road to Card Magic from Gene Huggard and Frederick Browey. Again, another Huggard and Browey book, another Dover publication, another book that you can find readily available online and this is another one of those books, card magicians refer to and advise you to purchase again and again and again. Why? Because again, there's so much information in this, tons of things that you're going to end up going back to again and again and again and this, the Royal Road, is literally a step by step to becoming better and better and better at card magic. You can literally start at the beginning and follow through their instructions and by the end of this book you'll be a card genius. Now, you know, and that's the thing about card books or any sort of magic books people always say, well, I'm not really into books, I'm into videos. Whatever. Don't think that you're not into books just because you don't like reading books. This is not a regular book, this is a textbook, okay? Textbooks you don't read the same way you read like a novel or weathering heights, okay? You read this slowly, you read a little bit at a time, paragraphs every day, okay? Maybe a chapter at best, okay? And you're going through this with a deck of cards in your hand and you don't have to rewind, you don't have to fast forward, you're going to stick a bookmark in there and you're done, okay? And again, like I said, you stick this on your shelf and you pull it off when someone says, oh, hey, do this or do that or you're watching a video and the guy in the video says, here do a crimp or he says, do this, you know, force and you're like, why don't show me again how you did that? That's when you pull out your book and you get the step-by-step instructions, okay? Royal Road to Card Magic. All right, number four, the expert at the card table from SW Erdnase. Now, why would I put this at number four? Shouldn't it be at number one, right? Come on, everyone says this is the best book ever. It is the best book ever, but as you can see, it is small, okay? It doesn't have a ton of content and yes, it's the grandfather, yes, it has tons of great stuff in it, yes, it's awesome, but it's also kind of like reading Shakespeare. It's hard to read. It is hard to read and it is hard to understand, at least for me. And there aren't as many tricks in this as there is more theory. And so I think as the books accelerate to number one, you're going to see way more theory, way more idea, less step-by-step, okay? So we're kind of moving away from the step-by-step books and moving into the theory and the you're becoming a better magician type books. The reason why I didn't put this at number one is because I don't go to this book as often as I go to the rest. I go to other books more than this and so, like I said, I think it's good to have. I think it's good to peruse and read, but it's never been my favorite. Number three, the art of astonishment from Paul Harris. Now, this is another one of those series of books. Paul Harris has three of these books and you can see how big they are. This is a hardback book and it's, you know, tons of pages in it. Now, this book is for intermediate to advanced magicians. I will say that right away, okay? This book series is also for magicians who've got some cajones because Paul Harris is not a timid magician. He's very brave and he is very willing to fail if it doesn't work. Like that's how good he is. He's willing to just try something for the sake of the art, you know. It is the art of astonishment. He is really trying to capture and create these moments of magic, not necessarily just do a card trick. So a lot of these tricks are going to feel like, whoa, you try that? Like, all right, go for it. But that's kind of how Paul Harris is and the reason why I put this up in the higher echelon of my list is because of the creativity that is in this book. These books might not inspire you to do his effects, but they might inspire you to become your own magician, which is what Paul Harris has done. I mean, think about who Paul Harris is. This guy taught David Blaine, all right? So yes, you get these books. Number two, Absolute Magic from Darren Brown. This is not an easy book to find, nor is it inexpensive. But it is seriously probably my favorite book on magic theory ever written. Darren Brown is a genius. Darren Brown is probably the greatest magician of our lifetime. And so he has written down all of his thoughts and theory about magic, why you should perform magic and why you shouldn't, what kind of tricks you should perform and what tricks you shouldn't, and how you should model and craft your character. Darren really goes through what he considers to be Absolute Magic. And this is an incredible read. And any magician I've spoken to that has also read this book agrees that this is probably the greatest book on magic that's ever been written. I'm probably exaggerating, but that's how I feel. I love you, Darren Brown. Number one, The Tarbell Course in Magic. This is another hardback volume series, okay? And each one of these books kind of chases after a different aspect of magic. So there's some that are more heavily weighted towards cards, other books that are more heavily weighted towards coins or mentalism or parlor or stage or numbers. There's always a little bit of theory in there. There's always kind of advice. There's always essays. And again, this is another one of those books you're going to use like a library. You're going to go back to it again and again, trying to find where was that written? Where was that? And I will say this, these are old books, very old, and they are written in an old fashion. And a lot of these style tricks won't even work anymore, because those things don't even exist. Some of these tricks are like, look through a keyhole. And you're like, you can't look through keyholes anymore. There's no keyholes. If I could look through a keyhole, I would be living in a haunted house, because that is the only place where keys like that still exist. Or they say, get out some epsom salts. And you're like, who has epsom salts? So yeah, not all these tricks are going to work for you. But again, we are all standing on the shoulders of giants, okay? And all of your tricks and all of your magic and all of your modern contemporary stuff, it comes from all of these people. And so it's good to know where magic started. It's good to have that foundation. You can't learn to play piano unless you learn to play scales. You can't learn to play guitar unless you learn to play chords. You have to start somewhere. You need to learn the name of your strings. You need to learn to read sheet music, okay? Same thing applies to magic. You have got to learn the basics, the core, where we all started, where we all began from in order to appreciate the art, okay? If you don't have the time to appreciate the art, if you don't have the time to sit down and read a book, maybe magic's not for you. Because a lot of magic is built on, no, all of magic is built on these books and these great men and women who've come before us. All right, so that was my top 10 magic book collection. Maybe I showed your favorite book. Maybe I didn't. Maybe you're like, what? Where was that book? So, hey, let us know in the comment section below if I missed one of your favorites. And as always, we ask that you subscribe to this channel if you want to stay up to date on the latest in cards and card magic. Also, you should like this video just so other people can find it faster. And if you want to follow me on social media, you can. 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