Card Wonders

Three hundred pages of text with, according to the copy, 140 effects! There are a few black and white photos, even fewer illustrations. The selections are not organized in any thematic way. The book begins with a list of 35 (!) Paul Gordon card books with the suggestion that the list is not comprehensive. If this doesn't suggest the precedence of quantity over quality, nothing will.

And so it is. It seems that Gordon simply publishes every thought he has on card magic with no filter whatsoever. Magical braindroppings. Virtually every trick begins by citing the origin of the effect to be presented. if there's an effect in the book that Gordon claims to have invented from scratch, I have yet to find it. So this is a book of variations, "improvements," or simply alternate handlings of the works of others.

Though I have yet to find aniything I'd regard as earth-shattering, I have found a few germs of ideas that give me pause, ideas that resurrect memories of long-forgotten things I used to do.

That said, there's the price. A $95 book with low-end production values would seem to put a premium on content. I bought the book because I buy almost every card book of even token interest. Were that not the case, I would have taken a pass on this one, at least at this eyebrow-raising price.