First of all, thanks to everyone who responded to my post about red
maples. As a beginner, this group is a lot of help to me.

Today I drove quite a long distance to go to a bonsai nursery called
Bonsai Northwest. It turns out that until now what I've seen is
pictures of really cool bonsais, and in-real-life bonsais of the type
that you buy for someone when you can't figure out what to get them for
Christmas and they subsequently kill because they don't know that
junipers have to be outdoors.

All I can say is "Wow." It turns out that a picture of a really cool
bonsai only conveys about 1/100th of it's coolness. I'm both excited
about the possibilites and depressed about the collection of hacked up
junipers and boxwoods on my patio. I guess part of my lesson of the
day is that it looks like if you buy an unpromising plant and bust your
backside for the better part of a decade, you can have a respectable
looking bonsai. On the other hand, if you buy an already great plant
and bust your butt for the better part of a decade (and somehow learn
some skill along the way), you can make a bonsai that is a wonder to
behold.

It's probably still worth it for me to work on average plants because I
need to figure out what I'm doing somehow, but I can now see as how
buying $12 red maples at the hardware store probably isn't what bonsai
masters do.

So anyway, my question is totally unrelated to this. Is there any good
books about bonsai that people recommend? Pretty much all of the ones
I've seen are beginning surveys of the techniques, which is fine but
there's only so many of those you need to read.

Thanks again!