Barleywine
I'm about half-way through reading Andy's book now and it's in line with his many blog posts, his comments here and the material he contributed to the Gilded Reverie PDF document. He definitely keeps the card meanings pared down to their simplest terms and doesn't digress into debating whether the idiosyncracies of one system are any more valid than those of another. I'm not sure about its usefulness to the absolute beginner, though, since it doesn't do a lot of "hand-holding." My daughter expressed an interest in learning, so I bought her a copy of the Gilded Reverie that she loved so much when I read for her, and debated for a while which book to buy to go with it. I finally settled on Rana's book for now, since I also found it very approachable and not at all intimidating.
It's interesting that, when I first picked up Lenormand, I plunged right into the GT and the near/far method seemed very natural - "organic" might be a better word - as did the straightforward material in the Phillipe Lenormand sheet. I feel that I got a sensible grounding in what Lenormand is about, and Andy's book builds strongly on that basis.
