Ah, the customary "About" page. What website wouldn't be complete without one!
Let me start with a little about me, and then I'll get into what this site's all about.
Me, myself, and I
Hi, I'm Geoff!
I'm an amateur sleight-of-hand hobbyist. You could say I'm a magician, or perhaps a cardician as I only really work with cards. Cardistry, meh... move-monkey, kinda-sorta. But at the end of the day, I'm just looking to have fun with cards.
I picked up a deck back in 2018 and have been practicing ever since. I practice almost daily, but rarely do I actually show anything off to anyone. When I do, it's normally my family or an occasional friend, but I do post things that I'm working on to my Instagram account every now and then.
I also found that I really like photography and coincidentally, playing cards are perfect photo subjects! I'm not, nor will I try to be, an expert photographer but that doesn't mean I can't try to have fun. When the world works with me, I travel plenty so there's never a shortage of photo opportunities with some of the best looking decks around. I have an "actual camera", but honestly I'm just too lazy to figure out how it works - all of the photos I take have been done with my phone (Android!).
I also have a day job as a software engineer! I have no plans to "quit my day job" to pursue a life of magic - I've found that it's plenty fulfilling to enjoy both. I haven't found a way to combine the two though, but maybe one day. I did, however, use my limited knowledge to build this site from scratch. Most blogs (or websites for that matter) would rely on an existing framework like WordPress or Blogger but I figured it would be a great opportunity to flex my fingers, so to speak. And that brings us to:
The Babbit's Grimoire
"What on earth is a grimoire?!," you ask. I'm glad you asked - you see, a grimoire is a book of magic spells or invocations. It's a spell book! But, the word also sounds cooler than "spell book" and I figured that "The Babbit's Spellbook" wouldn't have the same vibe to it, ergo, grimoire.
We're going to circle back to me a bit to answer this one though. When I started back into magic in 2018, I didn't really know where to start. I remembered a few books like Royal Road, but I wanted more. When I searched online, holy moly. Did you know there are so many friggin books about magic? Not just magic, but card magic?! Jeez. Also, not many great sources of help to identify where I should go next.
I wanted to help change that. I wanted to create a space where new magicians and magicians who are looking to expand their minds (or just their libraries) could come and get guidance. Now that my own library has grown a bit, The Babbit's Grimoire is aimed to be just that!
This site is a blog and while yes, I'll likely post random musings here and there, my goal is for everything to be helpful and informative. Book reviews, of course I'll have them. We'll get into the nitty-gritty! But importantly, I want this site to be an answer to the "I'm a new magician, what should I read?" question. And, more!