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I got a copy of this book for Christmas, so hopefully when I have a bit more time I'll read it a bit more in depth.

I've already come across quite a lot of the memory techniques as most of them are in Harry Lorayne's book; "How to develop a super human memory", or something along those lines.

With the coin vanish and card trick, I like seeing Derren's point of view on how to make it look more magical and his points on why. When you do a trick bit by bit like that, its just amazing to read.

I received a copy for christmas.

I've only really skimmed through it. I liked some of what he had to say about magic - but then when he got into reading people, his point of view was very similar to Ian Rowland's book on cold reading - ie. 'psychic bashing' and a number of other things that have been debated to death on this forum so I won't go there.
The book seems to be written for the general public to complement his tv show.

taneous wrote:The book seems to be written for the general public to complement his tv show.

That's certainly true, but I think the synopsis has given the book a very 'mass market' edge which it won't actually have. It's very unlikely that someone will just go through a book store and buy it if they don't even know who he is, and that's about 9/10 of the British public.

The way in which he wrote the book is quite complex and i think that in order to make sense of it you need to really want to learn these things this may put a large chunk of the general public off it but i still find it facinating even though i still cant get the hang of those darned memory palaces.

9/10

I also recieved a copy for christmas, and will try to read it soon.

I also received a copy for Christmas. I am about half of the way through it.

Alright for some! I knew I shouldn't have ranted to small children about Santa being lazy and doing nothing except eat copious amounts of mince pies... Now I'm going to have to purchase the book out of the hard earned cash I got paid for the rants!

But before I do I thought I'd ask a question: As I have both of the excellent volumes released to the magical community (Pure Effect and Absolute Magic) and The Devils Picture Book already, is this volume going to actually tell me much that I can't find from those sources?

Yes. As described above, this is not a book about magic and does not contain a vast ammount of 'exposure', simply a background to some of the techniques Derren uses. It is definitely worth purchasing nonetheless, and if you're interested in what he does, it provides references to help you get started.
Hope that answers your question.

EDIT: e.g. there is nothing on memory in Pure Effect or Absolute Magic, but there is in Tricks of the Mind.

I just finished reading this yesterday, I was surpised how much me and Derren think alike you know what they say about great minds, eh??

I'm getting a good buzz out of some of those memory techniques.
Damn Ive been reading some good books lately.

The only negative thing I have to say about the book is that the peg letters he uses are different to mine and I didn't notice till halfway through that section and it has totally screwed the whole thing up! On the plus side, I think is system is a little more natural so I'm going to change mine.