A Blog About Magic and Other Nonsense

For those who haven’t read my pre­vi­ous reviews of Euans work, let me make a few things clear. You will get for the price of a few pints of beer a small ring­bound book­let con­tain­ing a num­ber of effects and sleights, but be warned they are of an advanced nature. Euan how­ever does a ster­ling job of pro­vid­ing both ref­er­ences and descrip­tions of the sleights used. I’m proud to say that my own library is now good enough to han­dle most of the ref­er­ences. All I have to do now is actu­ally read and digest them all. If your a fan of Wal­ton and Sad­owitz then you’ll like the think­ing con­tained within, and there is much to be learned even for the not so advanced card worker (thats me by the way).
Con­tinue reading →

When I first sat down and con­sid­ered the value of the first vol­ume of this col­lec­tion I said:

There are many accepted clas­sic texts in card magic and this is almost cer­tainly one of them.

I’ll now take this state­ment fur­ther and say that vol­ume 2 has to be one of the 10 most impor­tant books on magic ever writ­ten. I have by no means read every magic book writ­ten, but I’ve seen enough to know qual­ity when I see it. This, the sec­ond and final vol­ume in Mr Elm­s­leys col­lected works, is qual­ity and cer­tainly deserves its place in my own per­sonal top ten.
Con­tinue reading →

There are many accepted clas­sic texts in card magic and this is almost cer­tainly one of them. Writ­ten by respected magic author Stephen Minch this is the first in a two vol­ume series that col­lects Mr Elm­s­leys unique take on magic cov­er­ing cards, coins, cups and balls and much much more. The book was writ­ten by Stephen Minch with very lit­tle input from Mr. Elm­s­ley who removed him­self from the magic com­mu­nity to focus on his tech­ni­cal work. The book is a col­la­tion of mate­r­ial sub­mit­ted by Mr. Elm­s­ley along with records and notes kept by his col­leagues and close friends. We should be grate­ful to those who took the time to record this mate­r­ial as well as to Mr. Minch for gath­er­ing it together.

Ide­ally you should get some­body else to do the criti­sism for you; prefer­ably some­body whose job is the­atri­cal direc­tion or pro­duc­tion. Fail­ing that, find any ordi­nary human being. Fail­ing a human being try a magi­cian.
Alex Elm­s­ley (1975)

Con­tinue reading →

Finally, got through this book­let from Mr. Bing­ham and so here is the review. As you will have seen from my review of “Free From Filler” I like Euans effects very much indeed. This pub­li­ca­tion con­tains 4 sleights and 11 card effects, each one with its own char­ac­ter and points of inter­est.
Con­tinue reading →

When I read Mogs review of another of Euans book­lets More Deriv­a­tive P*sh I was intrigued enough to visit his site. When I saw the con­tent of his book­lets I was inter­ested. When I saw the types of reviews he was get­ting from the likes of Peter Duffie, I was sold. Unde­cided on which of his four book­lets to buy I made the hasty deci­sion to get the full col­lec­tion. I con­soled myself that at least my beer tokens were going to a fel­low Scot (cheers Euan), and it wasn’t the first or last time I’d spent a wad of cash on unseen magic. As fate would have it, I wasn’t dis­s­ap­pointed. A few days later an enve­lope arrived with my pur­chases, with a hand writ­ten note from Euan, thank­ing me and advis­ing me if I needed any help to con­tact him (nice touch). Now I haven’t had time to look through the mate­r­ial in detail, but from my rough browse I am very impressed. Heres a review of the book­let which I have had a chance to work­thru in detail, Free from Filler.

Con­tinue reading →