Hi Jeff,

Your reviews indeed helped me save some money. It would have been a lot had I stumbled upon your website before making some purchases.

I can't wait to see the new version of your review site.

Yay! That's the goal. I'm glad it's working.

I guess you never read any book reviews by my long-time buddy Jamy Ian Swiss? He has written more critical book reviews than anyone in history in his long running Genii column "Light From The Lamp", which I believe are all now published on Vanishing Inc's website for free. He got the title of "magic's most feared intellect" because of them. I used to do reviews back in the day also, but more so long essays on magic theory and presentation.

Personally I never really cared what someone else's opinion of magic books were because we are totally different people with totally different styles. Also because I have been in magic for 41 years now so I can formulate my own opinions on what and what not to buy. I did not see any "reviews" until late in my career once I got online, and had already been in magic for about 23 years then even.

I can usually tell if I am going to like a book just by seeing it and the TOC. So someone else's opinion is not going to change that. Even reviews written by Jamy I liked some books he did not, and I disliked some books that he liked. For me reviews are a way to get a sample of the content. There is no way you can just go by what someone else says, you have to see it for yourself and then decide for yourself.

That is why I wrote my reviews as well, to give a sample of the contents, then people can buy the book, DVD, or trick to see for themselves if they like it. I give more weight to trick reviews as far as quality of gimmicks etc. But in the end I still have to see for myself, unless tons of people say the trick is crap or they are all broken or defective.

Then I will most likely not risk it. But books are different and everyone interprets them differently as well, so I like to form my own opinions on them. But most of the time I can already tell if I will like them as I said.