The Pages Are Blank Abridged Without Trick List

Hi, welcome to Real Magic Review, my name is Steve Faulkner, and today I will be reviewing The Pages Are Blank by Michael Feldman. Before we do this, please like and subscribe, and very importantly, it's all very important, isn't it? But check out onlinemagic.co, 900 plus videos of me teaching you magic, there's a new Rubber Band course, there's special guests, we've just had Noel and Rolly doing a session on creativity. The week before that was John Allen, we've had David Williamson, Looch, I'm not gonna loads of people, but they're all uploaded, 150 live sessions, and there's no better way than learning, other than doing the stuff yourself, than listening to magicians talk, and their concepts, and their struggles, and their challenges, and all that, so, and loads of different courses on there, on all the card moves you'll need, the concepts, how to practice, the Royal Road to Card Magic, all that, right, have a look at that, onlinemagic.co, it's great, and don't just take my word for it. Okay, so this is a book of card magic, love a book of card magic, but I do sometimes think, is there anything else that we can, how can there be more things we can do with a deck of cards? And of course there is, and it's endless, which is why I love it, really. This is the latest-ish book, from, one of the latest books from Vanishing Ink, so it's beautifully made, all that, I don't have to say that, beautifully printed, beautifully made, looks great, photographed wonderfully by, I did have it, James Murphy, and co-designed by Mihaly Kachalik, who's done a lot of this stuff, so it all looks great, that's good, brilliant, good quality. Is this stuff usable? Is it easy? Is it angle-proof? That's what everybody wants to know, isn't it? Probably usable, yes, commercial, yes, easy, no, a lot of it, but we'll talk about that in a sec. If you've seen the trailer, Michael has this really, well, something that I empathise with, a way of performing magic that is kind of out of sync with a lot of what we've been told for many years, and it's so nice for someone, and it's not the first time, I'm not saying he's the only person that's done it, but saying no, when I perform magic, I say it's sleight of hand, it's not real magic, you know, I'm doing this as a human being, it's years of work, and there is so much you can do, and I do all that stuff, and I really really love it, and it's nice for someone to say, actually, for him, it doesn't work to click, to create the magic moment, and ooh, for some people it does, for me it doesn't, and it's so nice to know I'm not alone, and the first part of the book, or the first essay that he writes, and I don't mean little in a derogatory way, I mean it's little as in it isn't really long, is defending, or arguing, sorry, is the better word, that point of view, and actually, I don't want to give it all away, but I, you know, Gustav Kuhn, the neuroscientist that's just, with Alice, just published The Psychology of Magic in his previous book, Experiencing the Impossible, oh, I always get the title wrong, says that thing about, you know, people don't believe it's magic, if they did, it wouldn't be impressive, because it's not impressive seeing something that you believe, right, the fact that you don't believe it, makes it amazing, because you know it can't be really happening, but you've just seen it, and that is the kind of ethos, if that's the right word, of this whole thing, the magic is so strong, that even though they know it's slight of hand, it can't be, because what they're seeing is incredible, and especially when we get onto the signature stuff, which has been talked about in the trailer, it's, yeah, anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. So this is all card routines, I would say of varying difficulty, but there's a lot of tough stuff in here, this is for people like me, or people like you that will, even if you can't do it, go, that's a really good challenge, I want to really learn that, so this is for definitely intermediate and above, there's no self-workers in here, but I still, but for me, the value is, I've always read this stuff, whether I could do it or not, because I think it builds our knowledge, and that's a different thing, but you know, don't let that put you off. Importantly, it's readable, and it's readable without cards in hand, now reading this has humour in it, and I think there are so many dry reads, you know, I love Marlowe and stuff like that, but it's pretty dry stuff, you've got to be in a certain mindset, excuse me, to do it. This, it reminded me a little bit of reading Chris Kenner's book, I mean, it's just funny, it's got these sort of quips, it kind of plays with you a little bit, it messes with you, it's got a great gag on sort of time travel, and I like that, and I like the fact that right at the end, it brings you back to the time travel idea, and it feels like a crafted book, and a book that's been written by him, and I know that's obvious, but you know, some books you think could have been written by anybody, could have been ghostwritten, it's just a set of instructions, but everything in here felt like it had a personality behind it, which I really, really love from a magic book, especially if I have to review it, because I have to read a lot of them. The foreword by Garrett Thomas, I really liked as well, that's lovely, and he talks in that about the fact that he's spoken for hours with Michael, talking about the philosophy of magic, and he does have some really strong opinions, some of which I disagree with, and actually Garrett Thomas, not Dan Garrett, talks about how they talked a long time, and they disagree, and I actually disagree with some of the stuff in here, but I like that, I like that I'm challenged, because I could be wrong, and I'd rather someone said something really strong, and I went, oh hang on a minute, than someone just be a bit fluffy, and you know, kind of a bit non-committal, which again is his big thing, commit to what you're doing, don't just go to people and be fluffy about it, and vague, you know, connect with people straight away, because if you're really sure about what you're doing, whatever method approach you're taking, they'll connect with you, and they'll think, this is good, rather than kind of be, yeah, anyway, I'm not gonna lie to you, I'd kind of, but halfway through this, I thought, this isn't gonna appeal to a lot of people, because it is, there's some really challenging stuff here, but then straight away, so for example, there's a bit where he's got like 10 bottom deals in a row, yeah, right, so, and that's where I sometimes disagree with him, because he talks about at first, anytime face up switch by Marlow, saying nobody does that, it's rubbish, it looks terrible, nobody should do it, he doesn't say that of course, but actually I think there are ways of doing it, maybe when then people aren't kind of focused on it, I think the way most people are doing it, yes, it can look too cosy, but then go, oh, and this is where you want to do 10 bottom deals, well, most people doing that, it might look a bit ropey as well, but again, in performance, you know, it's a different thing, you don't have to be that advanced to do a lot of the stuff, and you will find ways, if you know your stuff, of swapping out some of those moves straight away with that routine, with the spell check routine, I thought I don't have to do bottom deals there, I could actually do that, I could, I could come back with a multiplexing idea in a different way, and that's what I want from this, from books now, I don't want them to just give me a thing, I've got enough stuff, I want them to kind of ignite that kind of thinking, and that kind of disagreement, and this is really good, it's really solid card book, you're not going to do all the routines out of it, but you are going to be a better magician, and more knowledgeable magician, because of it, it's well written, you should be very proud of it, I certainly would be, if I could put a book together like that, and I think it's a real valuable addition to no doubt the countless books many of you've got on your shelf as well. Oh, I always get told off for not saying the negative in it, negative is, it really is only the fact that it's going to be too challenging for a lot of people, those moves, but don't stop there, do think about what you can do instead, and actually most of the time he'll give you different ways of doing it, you don't have to do the two card one palm, you can just do it normally, but you are going to have to palm cards in a lot of these routines, and do sleight of hand, all right, there's no cross cut force in here, but maybe you can do that instead, have a think about it. Right, thank you very much, waffle waffle waffle that was wasn't it, how long was it, about three hours, go and have a look at onlinemagic.co, that's a little bit more concise, you can actually learn some magic on there, and have a great one, do like and subscribe, check out onlinemagic.co, and I've got a podcast, I should have said that at the beginning, have a look at my podcast, just search Steve Fulton's Magic Show, I've only got one episode now, but yeah, that'd be lovely, and put a review if you like it, cheers.