Recomendations on getting started books

[charleychacko]

One that is rarely suggested but is most likely the very best beginner book (if you can find it) is "The Secrets of Alkazar" (Kronzek). It has exactly 12 tricks.

However, if you followed the book and did exactly what it told you to do and learned each trick right out of the pages, you would have 12 tricks that were 100% more entertaining and more deceptive than almost any of these guys who've put 5 years into learning nothing but difficult sleight of hand.

The book teaches proper misdirection, proper story telling, proper blocking...Well, it teaches magic and how to make your tricks truly magical. If you owned no other book and did no other tricks, but you owned this one book and did all 12 of these tricks, as taught, you would be lauded as a great magician by anyone that you performed for.