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Derek Haas

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Everything posted by Derek Haas

  1. I really enjoyed this novel by John Wray. It is told from three points of view, an escaped sixteen-year-old mental patient, the boy's mother, and the detective trying to find him as he hides out in the subway system of New York. This is more of a literary work than your typical suspense fiction... Wray paints an intriguing portrait of some troubled minds.
  2. I've read Fight Club, Lullaby, and Choke... I plan on slowly making my way through the Palahniuk canon. I dig his style.
  3. This is a fantastic short story collection. Each story is different and each story is the same if that makes sense... Tower paints a pitch-perfect picture of downtrodden lives and the struggles for connection and family. He deftly straddles a line between humor and pity. I highly recommend this.
  4. This book is excellent... I don't know if it is out in the UK yet. It is the true story of the Columbine School Massacre in Colorado. Cullen spent ten years reporting on the story and had access to all the police files plus the journals and videos made by the two killers: Eric Hughes and Dylan Klebold. The book is fascinating and scary as hell. I read it in two days... it reads like a novel... it also debunks a lot of the myths. If you like true crime stories, this is a great read.
  5. I just finished this book by a classic Texas writer Elmer Kelton. It's a really great piece of literature and I don't use that term lightly. The main character, Charlie Flagg, a crotchety west Texas rancher just trying to get by in the middle of the worst drought the state's ever seen, is wonderfully drawn. I don't usually read "western" fiction, but I'm glad I picked this one up. It's set in the 60's, a time when the independent or small rancher was going the way of the milk man. And yet, it feels timely and fresh. Anyway, if you're looking for something outside of your normal genre reading, I'd get a copy of this one.
  6. This book is fantastic. I highly recommend it.
  7. I read quite a few as a kid. I loved how every chapter would end in a cliffhanger... "And the car went off the cliff!" So you couldn't stop reading.
  8. I don't know about 5, but the best book I've read in the last decade is Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD.
  9. I read this book... It does a lot of things really well... I enjoyed the sections featuring Dickens more than I did the rest of the mystery (two years after his death), but all in all, I enjoyed it.
  10. 1. The Sun Also Rises - Hemmingway 2. The Winter of our Discontent - Steinbeck 3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Twain
  11. Hi everyone. I just wanted to let you know the paperback release in England for THE SILVER BEAR is two weeks from today. I learned from the good people at Hodder that two big supermarkets will be carrying the book: Tesco and Asda. Thanks so much for the support from the members here... you guys have been terrific. I've enjoyed the PM exchanges. And thanks again for the lovely review Michelle. In other news, the sequel is finished as of this week and will be out late this year in the states, though I'm not sure when Hodder has planned for its release in the UK. I know they are putting excerpts from it in the back of the paperback edition, so the UK market will get the first glimpse of the second book. Okay... thanks again. Look for it on March 6th. I'm also going to try to get to London to sign books this summer... so I'll keep everyone posted on that.
  12. I just finished a book on your list: THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Bleak, depressing, but beautifully written. Some of the character work is pitch-perfect.
  13. I just saw this thread (over a month late.) Since I write screenplays, I have learned to have thick skin when reading reviews on-line, especially from anonymous posters. They can be brutal. With the release of the book, I haven't had too many negative ones, and I think "readers" in general tend to be kinder or at least more civil than moviegoers. But I honestly don't mind criticism... I enjoy discussing the books and movies with people who took the time to read or watch them. I'd always prefer intelligent discourse, but I have laughed out loud at some of the more wicked (and sometimes clever) potshots taken on-line.
  14. Not only that, but he's a 16-year-old talking to his shrink. He's a wonderfully unreliable narrator.
  15. Not my favorite... (nor Maugham's for that matter)... but all his work is worth reading.
  16. They compare quite favorably. Curran did a great job capturing Maugham's sensibility, and Ed Norton had an affinity for the book that certainly influenced his performance. A thumbs up from me!
  17. I'm a huge fan of all things Maugham. You can't go wrong with any of his books, but if you're looking for something shorter, try THE MOON AND SIXPENCE. Fantastic. It's a fictionalized story of his relationship with Gauguin. OF HUMAN BONDAGE is absolutely wonderful, and arguably one of the great character studies in literature, but it's a chunk to chew off if you're just getting up and running on Maugham.
  18. To quote our third President, Thomas Jefferson... "I cannot live without books."
  19. OLD MAN AND THE SEA is an excellent, economic novel. No words are excess; no words are by chance. And since this is your first Hemmingway and you enjoyed it, I highly recommend one of the great novels of all time, THE SUN ALSO RISES.
  20. Thanks to all the well-wishers. Love the forum!

  21. I looked for a thread on this but couldn't find one, other than a few people mentioning they had bought the book or were beginning to read it. I thoroughly enjoyed it... read it in two hours. Anyone who loves books and who has thought about writing one should enjoy this. It's witty, often funny, and creates a refreshing character out of a very public figure. A quick afternoon read while you're tackling something more imposing...
  22. I like Peter Abrahams crime fiction... he's quite good at building tension and at getting inside character's heads and making the reader squirm. I've read four or five of his earlier books: The Fan and A Perfect Crime being two I enjoyed. I just finished Delusion, and it wasn't Abrahams at his best. The main problem is I got out in front of the characters about halfway through the book and then had to wait for them to catch up. Trust me, it's not that I am particularly clever... it's that there are only a few characters in the book, and simply by nature of their occupations, you can figure out who did what to whom. Also, the main protagonist, Nell, doesn't do much in the book to make us want to pull for her to get to the bottom of the mystery. As evidence mounts around her, she remains clueless. And some of her decisions make us, like the bad guy, want to strangle her. Speaking of the bad guy, he's the best part of the book. A one-eyed convict given his freedom, whenever "Pirate" is on the page, Abrahams is at his strongest. The thoughts swirling inside Pirates head are compelling, chilling, and feel authentic. The ending is rushed (just like this critique.)
  23. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Two disparate characters thrust on an impossible mission. A friend of mine called it "Huck Finn in Hell."
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