Devouring Books

[Sinful07]

Ive just acquired 13 steps to mentalism by Corinda, i was in total shock at how much material is crammed onto that book. ive skimmed through it, and even read the few pages, and im intimidated by it.

Ive also recently acquired:

AoA 1-3
Card college V.1
Psychokinetic Time - Banachek
Smooth operations - Kevin ho
Sleightly Magical - Dan and dave buck
One, Two, and Three - d+M

And Freak prediction by michael Paul. My question lies: how am i to devour these books? Devour as in learn from them. i generally dislike reading altogether, and im a visual learner. It may be an excuse, but its definitely something that i should point out before any potential answer to my questions are fired away.

I guess the common and most logical answer would be to read a few pages of a book one step at a time Correct? Any other suggestions?

 

[JJM10]

Decide where you want to start, you've got a ton of material there and you wont need any more for a long time. You should only work on one thing at a time fi you ask me. If it's mentalism you want to takle first start with 13 steps and then banachek's book. If it's cards go with card college, after that order wont be important just choose what appeals to you most. Moving on, if i were to choose, i would start with AoA, but that's just me.

One more thing....why did you get all that at the same time? Why does anyone do that? Why not choose one thing that you really want to start with and do it, then when you've finished and think you're ready to move on, buy something new. Just my 2 cents, I'm genuinely curious how and why you got so much at once.

 

[Sinful07]

Its called Christmas. =D

AoA, Card college, Psychokinetic time = Christmas.

13 steps and the other PDf's just recently. i decided to splash out.


Edit: the other ones were from beforehand.

 

[blahblah]

okay, start with AoA, pick a trick you like, their will be MANY.

if you need to learn new sleights sit down with your other book/s and learn the sleight, learn the trick, and perform it for a week, take your next look through the books and take another, do the same thing, for a week or so perform it, and again and again and again.

when you have maybe 6/7 tricks your really good at pick a few of them and put them into a routine, perform it for a month.

carry on with the first book, until youve done all the stuff you like the look off (write a list), now, do the same with AoA 2, EXEPT before you start on tricks, learn/perfect the sleights from card collage, now they will come quicker to you, (do the same with AoA 2).

do the same again with AoA 3.

once you have lots of routines from all the books start again from the first routine and practice/perform them all for a week.

its probabbly 2010 by now.

look through your other books, find tricks that intrest you, do the same thing, make longer routines.

that should do it.

 

[Sinful07]

any tips on actually reading the books? i find that skimming through the table of contents and finding a trick that looks intresting doesnt do justice to the books at all- but then again, reading through every trick and its mechanics utterly bores me too!

its a vicious cycle :<

 

[blahblah]

well, what effect do you like (generally) like cards, coins, mentalism?

ill recomend some stuff that I like, from the first two (I dont have the third), if you want ill get the list of tricks im gonna work through, for the third read this reweiv. http://forums.ellusionist.com/showthread.php?t=55380&highlight=art+astonishment

its a summary of all the effects in book number three.

to be honest 13 steps is a bit dry, read through AOA book 1 first, look at the effect descriptions, at what you like the look of, and write it down somewhere, at the end, re - read all the effect thats you like the look off, and chose five your gonna learn... ...and learn them.

 

[Deechristopher]

I really suggest that you do read through a book at a time, like as in just read it - You can then begin to sit down now that you have a rough idea of the theory behind the effects and a grasp on the concepts. Then you should start going thru the motions and looking into practicing and performing them.

There's a lot of effects in those books which will take a lot of practice to get the moves down, but there are also alot of mentalism ideas in there that you'll just need to go out and perform to get down.

Good luck on your journey, don't ever be afraid to just go out and perform these, it's much better to get into the swing of performing from the word go so you can pick up the other skills magic requires - The worst thing is for you to just sit down for years and learn everything in those books and all the others you pick up and then try to decide when you're ready to perform.

It slows the process and more likely than not, you'll develop a barrier. Just learn a few tricks and go performing at school or work, to friends, family, have fun with it!

D.