Barry's Guide to Book Tests (Reading Minds With a Paperback)

Somebody picks a word from a book. You tell them what it is. Here is every way of doing that, from a twenty pound forcing book to a Sherlock Holmes novel that has been quietly rewritten to help you cheat.

The book test is the oldest trick in mentalism and it is still the one audiences remember, for the simple reason that a book has thousands of words in it and everybody knows it. Ask someone to think of a card and they know there are fifty two. Ask them to think of a word on any page of a novel and the odds feel like infinity. When you name it, the room goes quiet in a way it never does for a card.

Every book test is solving the same problem, which is that there are too many words in a book for anybody to know them all, including you. Some tests solve it by making sure there are really only a few words they could land on. Some solve it by giving you a secret way to work out the word they picked. Some solve it by letting you look. And one or two solve it by making the whole thing so funny that nobody minds how it was done.

The other thing every book test has to solve is that it is a book, carried by a magician, and every single person watching has seen enough television to wonder whether the book is fake. The good ones are built to look like something you might actually own. The very good ones look like something you might be slightly embarrassed to own, because nobody would fake that.

Forcing books: they were always going to pick that one

Sven-Force Books by Oliver Williams

If you have read Barry's guide to trick decks, you already know how a Svengali deck works. A Sven-Force book is the same principle applied to a booklet. The spectator flicks through, looks at pages full of different things, and settles on one. It is the one you predicted. It was always going to be the one you predicted.

Oliver Williams has made a whole shelf of these, each with a theme you can build a presentation around: Dreams (flying or falling), Tastes of the World, Cocktails, Cities, Tarot and Toys of the 80s and 90s, which is the one that makes grown adults say "oh, I had one of those" before you have done any magic at all. Twenty pounds each. Pick the theme that fits the room and you have an opener.

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Book to the Future by Steve Gore

A Las Vegas themed book, examined by the spectator first, which is the bit that matters. They push a plain card into any page they like. You had already predicted the word. You can predict one word, two, four, and then do it again for the next person with different words, and the prediction can be written on anything from a business card to a flip chart.

No memory work, no peeks, no squinting. Steve Gore calls it a worker's dream and for once the marketing is accurate. It is A6 so it goes in a pocket, and it plays for walk around and for stage, which few book tests do comfortably.

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Any word books: they really can pick anything

This is the grown up end of the category. The spectator can go to any page, pick any word, and you work out which it was. There is no force. There is a system built into the book, and the book tells you the answer if you know how to ask it. None of the ones below need memory work, which is not something that could be said of the book tests I grew up with.

Revolution Book Test by Ellusionist

Ellusionist took a Sherlock Holmes novel and rewrote it around one of the strongest book test principles there is. The spectator goes to any page, forward, back, first line, last line, whatever they like, and you know their word. You could do it ten times in a row with ten different results, although as Ellusionist point out themselves, please do not do the same trick ten times to the same people.

It looks like a real paperback because it is a real paperback, just one that has had a quiet word with itself. Thirty nine ninety nine. If you want one book test that does the classic effect properly, this is the one I would hand you.

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The Progressive Book Test (Lord of the Flies) by Michael O'Brien

Michael O'Brien judges a book test on three questions: is it easy, do I have to memorise anything, and can it do more than one thing? The answers are yes, no and yes. The book tells you the word the spectator is thinking of, with no fishing and no forced page, and the routine builds as it goes, which is where the name comes from.

It comes in more than one title (Animal Farm is the other one we stock), and if you want the same thing small enough to carry, the Strolling Book Test uses the same methods in a pocket sized edition of Crime and Punishment. Which is a very heavy book to be pretending to read in a bar, and that is rather the point.

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Trinity Book Test by Alex Latorre

Three phases in one book. First you predict a free choice with a sealed prediction. Then you read their mind on a second word. Then the page they chose vanishes from the book and turns up in their own hands. That last bit is where it stops being mentalism and becomes magic, and Latorre has built it that way on purpose.

Forty nine ninety nine for a complete routine that goes from a quiet opener to a proper ending is good value. If you only want to carry one book and want it to be a whole set rather than a single moment, this is the one.

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Books that do not look like books

Mini Atlas Book Test

A little pocket atlas of the thirty one most populous countries, with sections on culture, monuments, population and so on. It looks exactly like the kind of thing a child is given on a school trip. They think of a country flag and you name it, and then they think of a long word hidden in the notes section and you get that too.

Twenty one fifty and it fits in a shirt pocket. The strongest thing about it is that it does not look like a prop in any way, because nobody on earth would fake a mini atlas. Which is exactly what somebody has done.

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Travel Test by David Jonathan and Nikolas Mavresis

Not a book at all. A travel article torn out of a magazine, kept in a slim wallet with a travel gift card. They think of any word in the article and you reveal it. Then, where most book tests would stop, you show them that their choice was not random and they were steered to that very word all along, and the proof is already in front of them.

Twenty nine ninety nine. A page torn out of a magazine is about as far from a magician's prop as you can get, and the second phase turns a good trick into a story they will repeat.

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Odyssey 2 by Chris Philpott

A luxury travel magazine, designed by a professional graphic designer so that it looks like something you would pick up in an airport lounge, with ten effects built into it. Contributions from Steve Valentine and Shawn Farquhar, and enough material to build a full close up or stage act from one prop.

Eighty pounds ninety nine is more than a book test, and it is less than ten book tests, which is the correct way to think about it. If you want to walk into a gig with one object and do twenty minutes, this is that object.

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The ones that are having fun

Sheer Luck (The Comedy Book Test) by Shawn Farquhar

You and the spectator stand back to back. They choose a page. You recite it, word for word, sentences, paragraphs, whole pages. And the audience can see exactly how it is being done the whole time, while the volunteer cannot, which is why it has been described as the paper balls over the head of mentalism.

Shawn Farquhar is a FISM Grand Prix winner and has been doing this in his own show since 2011, so it has had more road testing than most things on this list. It is not mind reading and it does not pretend to be. It is a big laugh with a proper finish, and it is ideal if you host, compere or want a mentalism piece that does not require you to look serious.

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Page Fright by Strange Stage Studios

A gaffed recreation of House of Hell, the 1984 Fighting Fantasy game book, printed on proper eighties pulp paper by people who went and found someone from the original print team to get the stock right. That is either commitment or a cry for help and I have not decided which. The participant chooses how they enter the house, and four different routes lead to four different methods, including naming the paragraph that scared them and the illustration they are looking at.

If you had these books as a child, you will want it before you have finished reading this. If you did not, your audience certainly did, and the nostalgia does half the work before the book test starts. It is also fully playable, which means it will survive anyone who picks it up and starts reading. Ninety four ninety nine.

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And if you want to use a real book, perhaps the one on their shelf, Word In a Million by Nicholas Einhorn is a gimmick that fits any hardback with a dust jacket. The book itself is ordinary, the spectator handles it, and you still name their word. Twenty two fifty, and it is the one to use when someone says "do it with one of my books then".

To sum up. Buy a Sven-Force book if you want an easy, themed opener for twenty quid. Buy Revolution if you want the classic any word effect done properly. Buy Trinity if you want a complete routine in one book. And buy Page Fright if you are the kind of person who still has a Fighting Fantasy book in the loft, because you are, and you know it. Our best mentalism tricks guide has more, and if you want to know what they wrote rather than what they read, Barry's guide to impression pads and peek devices covers the rest.