Customer Comments

Derek Neuland has commented on (5) products.

Crush It!: Why Now Is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk

Derek Neuland, July 15, 2010

I had the chance to see the author of this book when he spoke at Powell's and it was amazing. He sold me on the book, and I'm glad he did. This is not like any other business book I have ever read. It may not be a massive book, but it has a lot of great information. Gary has a really good voice and really knows how to grab the reader. After you read this, you'll want to "Crush It".

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Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality by Scott Belsky

Derek Neuland, July 15, 2010

I just picked this up today and devoured it. I always have trouble of coming up with great ideas and never following through with them. After reading this book, I feel more equipped to make those ideas into a reality. It's divided into small sections so it's a really easy read. I found myself thinking "i'll just read one more section" over and over again.

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Busting Vegas: A True Story of Monumental Excess, Sex, Love, Violence, and Beating the Odds by Ben Mezrich

Derek Neuland, June 25, 2010

I really enjoyed Bringing Down The House (and then the movie based on it, 21) but was yearning for more. I then found this book and was delighted to find that it was a semi-sequel to Bringing Down the House. I was skeptical as first, but it was just as good (if not slightly better) than it's predecessor.

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Undeleted Scenes by Jeffrey Brown

Derek Neuland, June 14, 2010

Undeleted Scenes is not a linear graphic novel (like Clumsy, Unlikely, or AEIOU), nor does it have a central theme (like Funny Misshapen Body). This is basically a Jeffrey Brown B-sides comic. Some are from smaller books of his such as Feeble Attempts, Minisulk, and the ever so popular Be a Man. Other comics are from various magazines, journals, and anthologies such as The Florida Review and McSweeney’s. For the Jeffrey Brown completist who’s thinking “I already have all this”, the book also contains eleven previously unpublished comics. My favorite story in the book that I had never seen before is called Pregnant Pause. It originally appeared in the anthology Galago and is about the experiences Jeffrey and his wife went through during the pregnancy and birth of their son. The fact that my girlfriend is currently in school to be a midwife may have had something to do with my enjoyment of it.

Overall, I think this is a great comic. For those who are unfamiliar to Jeffrey Brown’s work, this is a great intro to all of his different styles and topics he covers in his other graphic novels. For the die hard Jeffrey Brown fans, i’d still recommend this to you. You may have read a lot of it before, but the stuff you haven’t is worth it. Plus, it’s nice to have all of those small comics like Be a Man and Every Girl is the End of the World For Me collected in one book.

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The New York Four (Minx Graphic Novels) by Brian Wood

Derek Neuland, June 14, 2010

The New York Four is nothing like DMZ, the comic Brian Wood is probably best known for. It follows Riley, a girl who lives with her parents in Brooklyn and is a freshman at NYU. Through her distaste of living at home, she meets three other NYU students who also want to find an apartment and a four-way friendship forms around this. Riley is obsessed with her phone and forms a virtual relationship with an anonymous guy who's email address she finds in her pocket after a show. And the story goes on from there.

The story reads like a spin-off of Gossip Girl. It's really well written for what it is, but you probably won't be interested in it unless you're a big fan of teen movies like Drive Me Crazy, Mean Girls, and Can't Hardly Wait. If that's your thing, then this is a really great book. Ryan Kelly's art is really beautiful. His line work is thin and crisp. It reminds me a lot of J. Scott Campbell's style. The story in The New York Four is self contained, but they left the ending open for a possible follow up book.

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