Having recently rekindled my childhood interest in magic, and already being interested in what Mr Brown does, I decided to buy a copy of his book. And I am now going to do a short review on it for the benefit of my blog readers.
First of all, I’d like to say I had this book free thanks to Waterstones points! Wonderful things, if you buy lots of books a card is definetly worth getting.
Now onto the book:
Tricks of the Mind is a charmingly entertaining mix of biographical information, psychological techniques, rants about alternative medicene, religous fanatics, psychics and Daily Mail readers, all mixed in with some interesting personal anecdotes. Several times during the course of reading it I found myself chuckling out loud at Derren Brown’s antics (be it causing a tarantula scare in Bristol, or running down some stairs accidently exposing himself), smirked at his experiances with hypnosis on his college friends (including making one think there was an hippo in his room), and raise an eyebrow in disbelief at some of the “fanmail” he has recieved.
While discussing the topics including religon, paranormal and alternative medicene, he is mostly critical of the True Believers – those who refuse to discuss their belief in any way or will not embrace scientific evidence. From the fundamental christian of his teenage years who believed the reason her cold was cured was because of her belief in Christ, and not the natural recovery from the illness, to the chiropractor who scathed double blind scientific testing as it never produced the results proving their beliefs, none of those whose mind are so closed to other possibilities that they call these other points of view closed minded, both are shown as examples by Derren as the dangers of True Belief.
His criticism of mediums and those who deliberatly mislead those who are grieving is also quite scathing, though he himself believes he was too nice and civil in a chance meeting with Derek Acorah, merely denying any attacks on him personally and saying he simply had reservations about mediums in general.
The book is a must for anyone interested in psychological illusions or sceptical about the paranormal, or simply interested in the man himself.
To finish: A nice picture of Richard Wiseman reading Derren Brown’s book… upside down…
