> Leading Reading: An Approach to Cold Reading by Luke Jermay

Leading book on Reading! Report this review
Pro Privacy ON (login to see reviewer names) on July 24th, 2008
I finally got my copy of the DVD and book today. Im going to be reviewing each section of the book. Enjoy!

Presentation of the book 4/5. When I opened the package, I felt the book, And quite strangely, It felt very dirty! When I rub my hand on the front and back of the book, It kinda gets stuck at some places and it was slightly damp and gritty. It felt like faint sand paperish. yuck! The cover is actually pretty cool. I liked the "Drama" in the cover with the very Luke Jermay style text and that brush stroke of white along the front. And the black was a very flat black so that it didnt have much reflection. It is 28 Pages long but the 28th page is blank. It is stapled with 2 staples. This is the size of any manual you might get... But more pages than normal ones.

Introduction 4/5. I found the introduction very interesting. He thanks us for buying it. Then he tells us a tiny bit about cold reading and what it is and how it is basicaly used. The introduction is only 1 full page. it couldve been two if he went into a little more detail. but that doesent matter because its only the introduction. And one more thing before I forget, He doesent indent once durring the entire book. I know im not the most perfect at typing but I expected a little bit more from luke after owning like everything from him.

Cold Reading- A definition 5/5 This gave possibly the most amount of detail in the entire book. The paragraphs were long, The information was in detail, And he did a flat out good job at making this. It basically goes into greater detail from the Introduction. It tells us what cold reading is, Why we should use it, How we should use it, How other mentalists use it, And some history of it. It was enjoyable to read. It was interestingly typed and you didnt get bored while reading it.

How cold Reading works 5/5. This also goes into more detail than the other two chapters. He gives some performances and tips on performance here as well as when and how it was created. He says how it influenced people when horoscopes were published in the newspaper and how reactions played big to all this. Plus he gives this Thing that was pretty cool. It was a previously wirtten prediction for pretty much anyone. You can print some out and give them to your friends and because of the cold reading, You will pretty much get the same response from everybody you give it too.

Common areas of interest 3/5. If you own Emotional Intellegence, This is useless to you, But he does go over the basic main explanation of E.I. I cant say much about this without revealing it. But I will give you this. Spend the 10 bucks to buy this book, Learn the basic E.I, And work out your own version for it.

[/b] My approach 3/5. This wasnt entirely usefull to me . He just says what Leading Reading is and why it is usefull in the mentalism world. He gives a brief description of it in E.I. But he does tell you the difference between Cold, Hot, And Leading reading which I thought was kind of coo. Then he tells you what the manuscript is not which wasnt really neccesary lol.

Leading Reading 4/5. Once again he explains what leading reading really is and how to apply it to cold, hot, and other readings throughout your show and how to clear your show out and replace alot of it with cold reading to accomplish the same effect but to make it more impromptu. Then he explains what he does in his show and how He applys these readings to his show and how they all work together to be a great impromptu mentalism show.

A marked personality 2/5. [edited]! just pure [edited]! He doesent even explain it. He explains it yes, but it doesent make sence. He uses the word spectator a little too much and he goes into the presentation way too much instead of letting us create it ourselves. Plus it uses a gimmicked deck. He doesent really teach you how to do it without the gimmicks. He says "Instead of using the gimmicked deck, Just replace it with memorization" Which doesent make any sence because he only teaches it faintly with the gimmicked deck. The effect in itself doesent even make sense. They remove 4 aces then in the explanation you are removing any 4 cards and somehow you end up with 5 cards in each pile with all this other stuff and you end up with the revelation of the prediction. Just HORRIBLE!

Stock readings3/5. This honestly doesn't even make any sense. Its not a trick like they say in the description but it does go into way more detail on the revelations from E.I. But it does use a little too much memorization. But since my show doesn't really use much memorization so I will use some of this stuff to enhance my revelations. But he doesn't even say what stock readings are which was a downside. 6 pages though.

Covering Mistakes 5/5. I absolutely loved this part in the book. It is something that every magician/mentalist should live by and really cram into their head and keep it there! It is so helpful and it will take off some of the performance pressure you might feel during your readings.

Final Words 3/5. This wasn't very helpful at all. He just says thank you and why you should apply all your cold reading and leading reading and stock reading and hot reading into your show to make the things more effective but make it easier in the mix. But he does encourage you to buy E.I which will be incredibly useful with the purchase of this book.

Overall 5/5. If I hadn't bought E.I, I wouldn't have enjoyed this as much. But on the other hand, This goes way more in detail on cold reading than the DVD does in that little tiny section he pulled aside in the end to put cold reading in. In the DVD, He only tells you what it is really and not as much as how to put it into regular performance settings and climaxes. I really recommend spending the 10 bucks to get this with the purchase of E.I. You wont be sorry. Even if you arent a mentalist, This can help your performing ability so much and your audience will get the entertainment they need and you will get the reputation you need.

Thanks!

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