So, on the recommendations of one of the YouTube videos I watched, I bought the book The Royal Road to Card Magic by Jean Hugard and Frederick Braue. It was written in the 1950's, but the magician I was watching said that this book is solid gold. It covers a lot of the fundamentals of card magic, the shuffles, holds, passes, and other sleights. I started reading it and it seems to be very thorough. It mentioned in the intro that they would "rather have you emulate the tortoise than the hare". That's good because I feel like a strong knowledge of the fundamentals is key.
So, I've read through the first section which is about the Overhand Shuffle and ways to control the card using it. I feel like I've historically been sloppy at this and after reading through the section and watching a vid, I think that I have a better understanding of how to use it. The sleights included are pretty slick and somewhat undetectable... which is kinda the point, right?
Also awesome is that at the end of each section, there are several tricks one can learn using the techniques learned in this chapter and the ones before it, making for more and more complex tricks. Thus, it's easy to see what each technique is used for and how effective each can be.
Any rate, this book is what I'm going to be working on for the rest of the month. I have to figure out what I'm going to do for a "final project"; I feel kinda weird about potentially just... stopping doing this. I think I do want to continue learning. I really want to amaze someone some day, and I'm still not sure how to do it without like tooting my own horn. Maybe I'll have to. Whatever. :-)