It's Monday and you know what that means... Monday Mail Call!
Each Monday (give or take), I use this feature to highlight a few of the things that have made their way in over the past week or so. Packages, purchases, and emails -- oh my!
This week, I want to talk about three books I recently(ish) received. Two of them were sent to me by Denis Behr, another I ordered from Matt Baker.
The two books from Denis are Card Man Stuff and Super Card Man Stuff, both by Al Leech. A little while back, Denis was selling off some of his extensive library from Conjuring Archive and I couldn't help but grab a few -- these two booklets were small enough to fit in with a larger book so I figured why not.
I also had the motive of not having any works by Al Leech in my personal library and wanting to correct that. They're really small booklets, like most of the older ones are, but wow are they packed with good material. Some of the routines I've been practicing for a year or two now, turns out they have foundation right here in these books themselves! I love getting books from decades ago to learn that things people are putting out today were already created.
The third book that's sitting on my desk and bookmarked about half-way through already is The Buena Vista Shuffle Club. This book is my introduction to Matt Baker's work and so far, I am not disappointed. The intro alone was great, it vibes succinctly with my personality. And then, he split his personality into several fictional characters. I was really curious how that would play out in the book, but it's really clever how he did it. As a little spoiler alert, after Matt finishes describing how to perform a routine, the members of the Shuffle Club get together and jam together and talk about it. Each one offers different ideas about how to modify the routine, either by using a marked deck, shuffled deck in use, or just different handlings. Now I just need to bump up my memdeck work and I'll be able to use the book! =P
Three books, ya gotta love it! What's nice in this case is two of them are smaller so it's easier to skim through and pick out the things that are of interest and come back to them. And then, the larger book, it's well written and a plain good read. All in all, they make for a really good week!
Stay tuned for the next iteration of Monday Mail Call, there's a lot more to come!
Oh also, if you'd like to offer suggestions for books, tricks, decks or if you have questions about magic (performing, routines, sleights, etc.), just reach out here.