Magic Tricks

If you want to see what modern mentalism, post-Corinda, is all about, then dip into Michael Murray's A Piece of My Mind. Therein you will find page after page of brilliant routines, principles, subtleties, and advice that range from the simple, but why-didn't-I-think-of-it, way to do a cold reading and how to make your performance memorable to startlingly original stuff like the Comparative Uncertainty Principle, Springboard, and Between the Lines. Each one of these major items is probably worth about $30, so even though the ebook is $60, it's an outrageous bargain. By the way, one of my favorite things is called Cal-ender, which is a combination reverse Add-a-Number/Divination of PINs using a bug/undocumented feature in an ungimmicked iPhone calculator. I just about fell over when I read it, a minute later tried it, and it worked! Genius. How on earth do guys like Murray discover these things?

Anyway, as you can tell I am as enthusiastic as everyone else about this book. (OK, there is some stuff using DR that isn't for me, but hey, to each his own. It worked for Dunninger.) Though not for beginners or the faint of heart, the material here, if studied and refined, will turn you into something close to being a real mindreader.