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I have been working my way through Mark Wilson's Complete Course of Magic and wondered if anyone good recommend some good books on the subject of magic/performing. In other words what are the essential books that any would be magician should have!

These are all superb books on performing magic (not books of tricks):

Brown, Derren - Absolute Magic
Kurtz, Gary - Leading With Your Head
Nelms, Henning - Magic and Showmanship
Ortiz, Darwin - Strong Magic
Weber, Ken - Maximum Entertainment

For books on tricks the essentials are:

Cards - The Royal Road to Card Magic (Hugard)
Coins - Modern Coin Magic (J. B. Bobo)
Mentalism - 13 Steps to Mentalism (Tony Corinda)
Sleight of Hand - Now You See It, Now You Don't (Bill Tarr)

Are there any areas in particular that you're interested in?

I agree with saxman, the derren brown book really helped me in my performance style. the guy's a genius, and very funny read too.

I also agree with saxmad - these are excellent resources to begin with. In particular, I got a lot out of Nelms's book.

For mentalism, I would recommend both Corinda's 13 Steps and also Ted Annemann's Practical Mental Magic. The latter has the advantage that you can buy it at Amazon, while the former is a little harder to obtain.

drew wrote:I have been working my way through Mark Wilson's Complete Course of Magic. In other words what are the essential books that any would be magician should have!

drew, I have Mark Wilson's book and I had a look at it to see what it taught in the way of principles of magic....basically it's a good basic book and it teaches most of the principles of magic. However it doesn't teach the correct method of jog shuffle....I've said this before and I will say it again only Erdnase and Huggard teach the correct method of that particular slieght!

Erdnase in At the Card Table and Huggard in Royal Road to Card Magic! If you think otherwise then feel free to try to convince me but I don't think you will.

So with that in mind you have two books already that should be on your list!

Next up might be a book more to suit your magic style, but if you get through those two you should be on your way to chosing any magic card or close-up book and will beable to judge for yourself!