If I have to evacuate and can take 5 books with me, these are the ones.
Recently in a Facebook group someone asked a good question, and while I answered it there, I thought I’d expand on it here, giving some reasons why I made the choices I did.
Question
(Paraphrased) Write down your 5 favorite books on mentalism from which you really learned some new, creative ideas and methods. Books that you don’t want to end when you read them.
Answer
The following are not necessarily in order, and I’ll admit I’m kind of cheating because the first two are single books of multiple volumes.
The astute among you will also notice that Practical Mental Effects and 13 Steps aren’t included — nothing against those, and I still pick threw them every once in a while, but with the five books listed below, all the techniques I’ll ever need are included.
1. Syzygy – The First Six Volumes, by Lee Earle
I subscribed to Syzygy for one year way back in the day, and kept going through those 12 issues time and time again, discovering things that didn’t seem to fit me at an earlier point, but for some reason now caught my fancy.
When I heard that I could get all five original volumes, plus the previously unpublished sixth volume, all in one book, I jumped at it. It’s not cheap, at $125, but (looking at the sales page…) “…five hundred twenty eight 81/2 x 11 inch pages offer over 270 full routines, hundreds of photos and illustrations, interviews, and professional advice from the top professional and amateur performers around the world.”
Every time I leaf through it I find more good stuff. You could buy that one book and have enough routines for a lifetime of performing.
2. Prism, by Max Maven
I bought three of the Color Series of Mentalism way back when they first came out (or shortly thereafter). Then it took me 30 years to find the Green book, and I never did find a good (reasonably priced) copy of the Violet book, so I gave up and bought Prism a year or so ago.
There is some of Max’s stuff that feels like only he could make it work, but there’s enough “ready to rumble” material in those books that I’ve used pieces here and there through the years. And just like Syzygy, every time I go through I find more stuff that magically became “good” somehow since I last looked at it.
Just in the past six months I looked at one of the routines in the Violet section and tweaked it to come up with a routine that I now use whenever I can. I suspect I’ll be pulling material from that book for as long as I’m performing.
3. Mind, Myth & Magick, by T. A. Waters
This is out-of-print and I see it available every once in a while for a few hundred bucks. I bought it back when it was a “normal” price — I also didn’t appreciate it back then. In fact, it took probably 25 years of it sitting on my shelf before I had thoughts other than, “Why did I buy that?!”
The stuff in the book is not all “ready to go” — in fact there are some things in there that maybe never got performed at all, but were more just theory? I’m guessing, but that’s how some of it feels to me. But even those things give me ideas to think about.
MM&M has so much info, and the effect names don’t really tell you much about them, that it’s kind of hard to read. It’s not the kind of book where you start on page 1 and go through to page 806.
But when you do pick it up, as I just did to see how many pages there were, you’re likely to see something that catches your fancy, as I just did and had to grab for a bookmark before I put it back on the shelf. (The book has a large number of bookmarks sticking out of the top!)
4. World of Super Mentalism, by Larry Becker
I went back and forth between this book and Stunners Plus, also by Larry Becker. While the latter has a *lot* more routines, The World of Super Mentalism (WoSM) was one of the first mentalism books I ever bought and so emotion won out over logic.
But emotion aside, there are routines in WoSM that use techniques that I still use, more than 40 years later. In fact, I just finished using the method in CB Mentalism to create a routine that’s valid for current audiences. And I used an idea from Ultraffinity to help me with a routine that looks nothing like the original.
I bought WoSM before it was volume 1, and now that I get to thinking about it, I believe I’m going to go get WoSM 2 from the Lybrary right now.
5. Protoplasm, by Christian Painter (links to ebook version)
I first “discovered” Christian Painter in the issues of Reel Magic Magazine (one of the best values in magic today), and then I discovered he wrote a book! It’s available as a physical book and as an ebook and it’s all about close-up mentalism.
I will admit that I’m not a close-up kind of guy — put me on a stage and that’s where I’m most comfortable. But, there are times when it might be useful to “do something” for someone and there’s no stage to be found, so I decided if I wanted to have some effects available in my pocket, Christian Painter would be the guy to see.
Most of the routines in the book don’t require much in the way of sleight-of-hand, and in some cases Painter gives alternate handlings where no sleights are used at all.
Even as much as the “tricks” I love the essays in the book — his My Definition of Mentalism essay had me literally pumping my first and yelling, “Preach it!” (Blame my southern Pentecostal upbringing for that.)
(Possible) Honorable Mention: Unreal, by Bruce Bernstein
This is listed as “Possible” because it’s a book I don’t have yet, but I hear so many good things about it from people I trust that I’m going to have to get a copy before it gets sold out again.
Of course, then the hard work would begin — if it’s really that good, which book from the list above will have to drop down in order to make room for it?!
In Closing
I know that your list would probably be much different than my list, and neither of us are wrong — and even my list may change from year to year (although I have a hunch Syzygy and Prism will always be there). What appeals to me and how I like to perform isn’t necessarily going to resonate with you. And vice versa.
The bad news for me is there are still so many mentalism books I haven’t had a chance to read and I’m getting older… I’m pretty much resigned to the fact that I won’t be able to get to them all.
But I will try.
