I used to love Penguin for their awesome demos but now all they have is some guy just talking about how good the book is. I'm upset Penguin. BTW is he Sam Blankenship?

These demos? http://www.penguinmagic.com/alldemovideos.php

The asian guy in most of the new videos is Jay Noblezada. He's a really good magician, but unfortunately, he works for penguin.

This same discussion is going on at the Penguin forums as well. No, I don't think it's Sam. You can see a picture of him on the Penguin blog. I really don't know who it is.

Penguin is in a tough position with book reviews. Most of their clientele seem to not want to read, preferring "visual stimulation" for everything. It's hard to do a book review without talking about the book. It's even harder to try and review books on video as there's really not much they can do but talk about the book. Some of the Penguins complained that they should have demo'ed some of the tricks contained in the books. This complaint is hard to fulfill considering some of the books in question are essays and contain no tricks.

You also have to remember that Penguin is in the business of selling magic, not reviewing it. Does anyone really think they'll find a negative review there? All the reviews you read (or watch) there, no matter what you call them, are still sales pitches.

For the books demos they should atleast show a trick or two from the book, and then talk about it.

Try performing a trick from "Shattering Illusions." Go ahead, I'll wait.

Believe it or not, there was a time when people bought books simply based on the description on the jacket or simply because they knew of and enjoyed the author. Now we have an online demo of someone speaking about a particular book, giving a verbal overview and description of the material in the book, and it's still not good enough for some of you? Wow, how lazy have we become?

Maybe its not a matter of being lazy, but spending money well. Why not take in the extra info before spending your hard earned cash? And we have all purchased a crap trick based on the description....big mistake. I am glad we now have easy ways to communicate and review new products.

Well that's why penguin magic has a comment area on all the protects. I really never buy something cause of what someone that worked for the place said. Its not like they would say the protect is bad.

There is a magician/mentalist that sometimes posts on the Genii Board and MagicTalk. I don't know him, but saw a picture of him on his website - his name is Paul Draper, and I think it's him. I'm pretty sure he's a professor at UNLV, so it makes sense.

Ron