Great Books about Magicians or Circuses
a list by Eric Mueller, airplane and bedtime reader
For some reason, recently I've been reading lots of books about magicians... and circuses. I'm not sure why. I'm not even sure why they go together so well, but they do. Here's some books I loved about one or the other:
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onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;" rel="nofollow">Carter Beats the Devil
by Glen David Gold
Amazon says:
Gold's debut novel opens with real-life magician Charles Carter executing a particularly grisly trick, using President Warren G. Harding as a volunteer. Shortly afterwards, Harding dies mysteriously and Carter is forced to flee the country. Or does he? It's only the first of many misdirections in a magical performance by Gold. In the course of subsequent pages, Carter finds himself pursued by the most hapless of FBI agents; falls in love with a beautiful, outspoken blind woman; and confronts an old nemesis bent on destroying him. Throw in countless stunning (and historically accurate) illusions and historical figures like young inventor Philo T. Farnsworth, and you have old-fashioned entertainment executed with a decidedly modern sensibility.
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496 page paperback
|$14.95
|182 reviews
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onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;" rel="nofollow">Water for Elephants
by Sara Gruen
Amazon says:
As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie, it was there that he met Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And he met Rosie, an untrainable elephant who was the great gray hope for this third-rate traveling show.
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350 page paperback
|$8.37
|1,360 reviews
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onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;" rel="nofollow">The Prestige
by Christopher Priest
A terrific novel which happened to be made into a big movie (starring Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson and Christian Bale) in 2006. Set in 1878 and the story of two rival magicians, it's fantastic with some great twists. Check out the Amazon reviews-- everyone raves, and so do I.
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368 pages
|$7.99
|87 reviews
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onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;" rel="nofollow">Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
by Jim Steinmeyer, Teller
Amazon says:
Jim Steinmeyer's astonishing chronicle of half a century of illusionary innovation, backstage chicanery, and keen competition within the world of magicians... a cultural history of the efforts among legendary conjurers to make things materialize, levitate, and disappear. This book unveils the secrets (and life stories of the fascinating personalities) behind optical marvels such as floating ghosts interacting with live actors, disembodied heads, and vanishing ladies. The dramatic mix of science and history, with revealing diagrams, photographs and magicians' portraits by William Stout, provides a glimpse behind the curtain at the backstage story of magic.
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384 page paperback
|$10.17
|28 reviews
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by Katherine Dunn
This is an endearing book about sideshow freaks... but even if you removed all the fascinating, twisted and unforgettable aspects of the characters, you'd still be left with one of the sweetest stories ever.
Amazon says:
A wild, often horrifying, novel about freaks, geeks and other aberrations of the human condition who travel together (a whole family of them) as a circus. It's a solipsistic fun-house world that makes "normal" people seem bland and pitiful. Arturo the Aqua-Boy, who has flippers and an enormous need to be loved. A museum of sacred monsters that didn't make it. An endearing "little beetle" of a heroine.
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368 page paperback
|$10.17
|243 reviews
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Flashlight Worthy.
Recommending books so good, they'll keep you up past your bedtime.
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I live in Los Angeles, where it's not really about reading, it's about movies -- yet given the choice, I usually prefer to curl up with a good book. Most of my reading gets done on airplanes or laying in bed in that quiet hour right before lights-out. I'm also known to collect pretty much every book having anything to do with Disney's theme parks.
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