Derren Brown - Confessions of a Conjuror

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Postby phillipnorthfield » Oct 27th, '10, 22:48



Ted wrote:
phillipnorthfield wrote:Who the f*** thought those footnotes were a good idea!, I had to hold about 4 finger breaks to keep track of which page I had to jump to and from, it was ridiculous.


It's just his subtle way of teaching readers how to control cards :)

Actually, I thought the card sleight illustrations were interesting. If you've not bought the Devil's Picturebook DVD then you might not get it, but the drawings are hints at how to perform the effect he writes about, even though it's not explicit in the text.

But then, if you've bought the DVD you would not need the drawings, so maybe it's a little too clever for its own sake...


:D I did like the simplistic graphs. Wasn't to keen on the move explanations though, didn't really see that as necesarry. I did notice how he didn't talk about, the false deal bit* I actually enjoyed the book, so can't really criticize :p. The first 100 or so pages were the best.

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* P>S I felt the need to insert a footnote, as I felt it would be a funny concept joke, now though, I'm not so sure and have nothing to fill it with... bad times :oops:

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Postby Tommy Magic » Oct 31st, '10, 15:42

I can eat Marmite, just don't particularly enjoy it - olives are the same for me - I neither love 'em nor hate 'em.

Similar feelings for this book which seemed to hover between mildly annoying (e.g. eggs benedict bits, and the extended and mostly pointless footnotes), to being actually quite interesting, (the story about the thinking and method behind the card routine he performs in the restaurant).

I have the urge to extract the 'card routine story' text from the book, (like actually retype it myself!), and then I'd be able to read that story without the annoying interruptions of Derren's (mostly childhood) memories, which are quite frankly, pretty damn boring (Sorry Derren!).

Happy to say that I did make it to the end of the book, but a rather dissapointing 4/10 from me

(Marmite - 5/10 Olives 6/10)

To end on a positive, I liked the design of the book (made to look like a red bicycle deck), In fact that is probably the best bit about it :))

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Postby themagicwand » Oct 31st, '10, 16:14

Inconcievable!

Is this a reference to the wonderful Princess Bride?? I really hope so! :D

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Postby Tommy Magic » Oct 31st, '10, 16:39

themagicwand wrote:
Inconcievable!

Is this a reference to the wonderful Princess Bride?? I really hope so! :D


Vincini "I do no' think that word means what you think it means"

:D

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Postby themagicwand » Nov 1st, '10, 02:34

Tommy Magic wrote:
themagicwand wrote:
Inconcievable!

Is this a reference to the wonderful Princess Bride?? I really hope so! :D


Vincini "I do no' think that word means what you think it means"

:D

Excellent! Love that film!

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Postby SimonK » Nov 1st, '10, 10:34

Yep, the footnotes were a killer. Particularly as I was reading the ebook version - totally lost the the thread and halfway through decided to ignore them and plough through to the chapters end and read them all out of context. Sadly this led to reinforcing the feeling that the bulk of this book was pretty trivial, almost like he was desperately padding out each chapter to reach a wordcount. Pages and pages about After Eight Mints. Bloody hell :)

That said, there were some good bits. I really enjoy it when he writes about magic, it's a shame there wasn't more of that.

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Postby DaveM » Nov 1st, '10, 16:14

Just an excited post...

Yesterday I got given this and Devils Picture Book as totally unexpected presents! Yay!

I'm really looking forward to getting through them. :)

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Postby SamGurney » Nov 12th, '10, 01:32

Last week someone who knows me probably too well bought this for me on a whim. After that I really didn't care if they book was 600 pages of waffle, I was incredibly greatful as I think anyone should be who has someone who makes such a kind gesture. Just a passing note for christmas time.

I wasn't able to get stuck in straight away, although I must admit, I had been treated to the VERY sexy harback version of the book and it looked particularly delicious. The aesthetic appeal of the book was the epitome of how unusual the book would be for my tastes- my bookshelf has wedged plenty of cheap, dog-eared, annotated paperbacks on various topics that reveal my propensity for ecclecticism. A book for me is rarley light and I have no other fancy books with painted pages* and I never purchase autobiographies** or the latest Dan Brown*. However***, the book was a nice contrast to my usual read and I hardly even noticed that I was nearly finished.

This type of light reading was refreshing and at times incredibly funny. Parts were very significant and in my opinion had particular literary symbolism. In general, it was a fun escape from the world for the odd couple of minutes when I had nothing better to be doing. The annotations were poorly placed towards the END which is what made them irritating. The rest of them were bearable, but I like a book to have a grand finale- I want the final pages to fly by and it was particularly frustrating to find that I had to read about poached eggs.

The book is quite openly speculations about random things. There are no pretenses it is significant and that you really ought to know it. It is therefore, INCREDIBLY subjective as to whether you might enjoy it, although don't allow negative reviews to colour your judgement- that is up to you and I generally find reviews of things reciprocate and begin to echo each other****

The book sees a departure from Derren's more psychological pretenses and the 'acedemic pretenses' I believe were genuinley Derren being curious about Descartes and Hobbes. There are some touching and incredibly important messages in the book and some wonderful discussions about magic, which the meticulous Derren fan should probably be aware of already from 'Absolute Magic' and 'Pure Effect' .

Perhaps though, as a more 'autobiographical' book- in a contemporary and interesting frame of an effect- it is an invitation into knowing the Derren that lurks beneath the act, on a more open scale.*****

Anyway, the most important thing was that I found the book an anjoyable way to spend some time- parts of it weren't great but parts of it were excellent. That is probably everything I have to say about the book. Oh yes, and he dies in the end. Seriously. Sorry to spoil it.




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*Ignoring the complete 60 or so Sherlock Holmes adventures I have, together in one tome, purchased from the alluring Sherlock Holmes museum in London for an astonishing £15. Strangley enough, one of the things I associate with the Sherlock Holmes museum is Derren's performance on Richard and Judy. For me, a book which is more interested in aesthetics smacks of some of the leather-spined books that furnished the edwardian private 'Libraries' of the archaic, etonian, archetypal scholar- a mental image which has never found appeal, perhaps due to my negative associations when I think of 'upper-class' scholars in general.
**Another mental image which I find quite repulsing in terms of books, is the tepid 'autobiographies' of celebrities which have emerged over perhaps the past decade, as far as I have been aware (not that I could read in the 90s). It evokes corporate hardback, plasticy sleeved, giant books, donning thick pages and a font of around size 70. They all appear to be entitled 'My story' which I can't imagine being well recieved had Orwell pitched his new novels as 'My Story' although, by definition, it was his story. Of course though, this does depend on the extent to which an allegorical tale 'belongs' to someone- in the same way an analogy is the creation and perhaps projection of the promulgator, although the observation of the analogous and creative connection he (or she) has stumbled across. An analogy I might offer is that of discovering a scientific theory- nobody owns gravity, but it can be discovered.
*Such is the extent of my not keeping up in this general stereotype of paperback novels, that I am unawares as to whether or not Dan Brown still writes books. What they were about, I have no idea. Something to do with Pallestine. Personally I much prefer my literary hero 'Noam Chomsky' who fabricates these fantastical stories about how America is actual evil. It's ironic because America is so benevolent and horoic.
*** I do find myself somewhat overusing this word. I once went into a lift. It was embarressing.
****Not that I might at all be suggesting people are liable to conform.
*****I was delighted to discover that Derren, too, cheated on his oral foreign language exams, using his magical knowledge. This is definatley something I have never done. Ever. Although I might have occasionally used sleight of hand to finger palm a folded crib sheet which was a long strip which I folded one fold at a time with a normal hand gesture, glanced down at my allowed '40 words' which I had explained to my teacher, I had written as prompts for what I had to supposedly memorise to justify my incessant glaring at the paper and I gave her my preprepared writing to read throughout as I spoke, to 'check I hadn't missed any parts' which kept her misdirected as she read it whilst I was supposedly reciting my memorised sheet. When I had finished reading my supposedly memorised discourse in a foreign language I refolded it with misdirection into the small square it easily folded into- having been prefolded and crimped so that I palmed it from my pocket facing the correct way- and palmed off the sheet and dropped into my pocket. To excuse the visible shadow, I had snook into the room of the exam at lunchtime before the exam under the guise of preparing my allowed 40 words and checked were I would have to sit relative to her so that the light source did not betray me and make the paper virtually transparent, as happens with a light source from behind you. I then took another official sheet of paper which I was supposed to have written my 40 words on, but had conveniantly forgotten to do so, giving me an excuse to have two sheets in my hand, one of which was folded, giving a triply thick wad of paper concealing my crib sheet.


''To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in another's.'' Dostoevsky's Razumihin.
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Postby Nic Castle » Jan 4th, '11, 22:08

I think I must be one of the last people to read this book and being dyslexic, struggling with page numbers finger breaks and foot notes along with very long words made this book a nightmare. But I loved it and enjoyed every bit of it.

I have had a few people I know who aren't magicians readit and their comments have been startling to say the least. Their response was "Is he gay?* Was he trying to come out without coming out?" I don't know the answer or care, but there is no doubt he has written a book that is relevent to different people on different levels whether they are magicians or not.

*The two people who said this were gay themselve maybe it was wishful thinking but who knows!!!!!! People!!

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Postby sleightlycrazy » Jan 4th, '11, 22:12

Actually, Nic, Derren came out a while ago... Your friends are pretty observant. :wink:

Currently Reading "House of Mystery" (Abbott, Teller), Tarbell, Everything I can on busking
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Postby DaveM » Jan 4th, '11, 22:26

The book makes it clear enough. I'm not sure how your friends could miss the books explanation of how he willingly came out and then later got embarrassed by a very unnecessary headline in The Sun newspaper who were presumptuous enough to assume they had outed him.

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Postby Nic Castle » Jan 4th, '11, 23:24

wait til I see them. Maybe they should apply for jobs with the Sun.

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Postby Mr_Grue » Jan 5th, '11, 08:51

A J Irving wrote:
phillipnorthfield wrote:P.S Who the f*** thought those footnotes were a good idea!, I had to hold about 4 finger breaks to keep track of which page I had to jump to and from, it was ridiculous.


I would advise you to avoid The House of Leaves then.


Lulz! Or Infinite Jest.

I've nearly finished the book (Confessions, not House of Leaves (which I have in the anniversary edition; sexy)) and am loving it. The thrust of the book seems to be that biography's both auto and not are better served by this pseudo-stream-of-consciousness than any attempt at an (equally pseudo) constructed narrative, something Brown explicitly discusses in the book itself. It's also not a new or original device; Nicholson Baker's debut novel The Mezzanine took a similar form, telling the shock tale of a man buying a sandwich on his lunch break, but succumbing to Proustian revelry throughout.

The introduction of the plot, and the frustration of the diversions preventing the plot progressing, creates tension, and there is a lot of humour employed in its execution. He spends two chapters on flicking a playing card. The sequence in which a footnote on lifts spreads across several pages, and is then immediately followed by a second footnote that does the same was surely meant in fun.

On a side note, something that the book hasn't dwelt on is the confusion of time that the book occupies. The revelry of it takes as its leaping off point Brown's experiences as a magician performing walk around in a restaurant, but much of the diversion is clearly about things that have taken place subsequently. So in reading this the image that comes to mind isn't of some middle-distance-gazing card-hack but of Brown sitting in his London appartment reminiscing on his card-hack days.

Brown has struggled to describe what this book is. I think the best and shortest description of it is a portrait of the author.

Simon Scott

If the spectator doesn't engage in the effect,
then the only thing left is the method.


tiny.cc/Grue
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Postby Lord Freddie » Jan 10th, '11, 22:11

I quite enjoyed it.
It was rather like an elongated, pseudo-intellectual version of one of Ronnie Corbett's chair monologues.

Imagine little Ronnie's voice when you are reading it and you may enjoy it more...

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Postby Replicant » Jan 10th, '11, 23:15

I'm glad I read this on a Kindle because I was constantly looking up the meaning of all those long words he used (cos I'm fick). Despite his slightly pretentious style and inclination for long words, I did I enjoy it for the most part. But I didn't like all those footnotes as it ruined the flow of the book for me. Not a bad read but not as enjoyable or easy to read as Tricks of the Mind, for me at least.

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