Newbie magician advice (also Raven and Svengali decks)

[charleychacko]

For the "seekers":
1) Part of learning magic is to do some leg work, reading and research for yourself. That is what the information on this thread will hopefully help you to do - it is not so you can sit on your hiney and get other folks to do the hard work for you 
2) The advice from anyone on this forum is almost certain to be "start at the beginning/with the basics" - so please, don't just ignore whatever's on here and start a topic about how to be Blaine - this thread's purpose is partially to answer that post before you ask it!
3)This forum hosts different people with different styles - please don't get annoyed or confused if two people disagree over a particular resource - choose yourself or perhaps PM someone for more detail. Use your nog, basically 

for the "guiders":
1) Please be as concise and objective as possible. If you disagree with a poster's advice before you, please say things like, "I actually struggled with X and found Y much better", rather than "X is rubbish" - different people learn in different ways.
2) Something to try: put Cards, Close-up, Coins, Mentalism etc in bold and perhaps even in colour when you recommend something - that way should this thread get long people can scroll through to find recommendations that they're interested in.
3) This doesn't necessarily have to be just for be just for beginners - if you've got good recommenadations for more advanced books, give those too - just make sure you make it clear what level you recommend it for.
4) Feel free to "second" recommendations - that way folk can see how popular something is. Also to add further detail, such as "X is good but not many illustrations". In these instances, naming the resource you are referring to rather than rely on position of the post would be a good idea.


for everyone:
I'm hoping people can refer others here; as such, I suggest we keep off-topic posts or even "pleasantries" to a minimum - there are plenty of other threads for the "cheers mate" "lol" type stuff, but if this thread actually ends up working (  ) it could get a bit clogged with banter if we're not careful.