House of Leaves

Is...Is this book any good, I hear praise for the book a lot, but others seem to say its just piled on with so much nonsense as possible in the hope of confusing people to the point where they shrug and mutter, "I guess that's genius."

So yeah, In short, how does this book fair?

I didn't like it. It's the kind of book that takes a special person to read. It's hard to wade through, and I found it generally uninteresting. But I've heard mixed things, including a very praising comment from someone whose opinion I trust greatly.

I think it's either your thing or it isn't. Either get it from the library, or go to Barnes and Noble, read the first thirty pages, if you like it, buy it, if not, be glad you didn't waste the money on it.

I thought House of Leaves was a great book. I started and finished the entire thing in a single day. I agree that it takes a certain kind of person to read it; someone who isn't turned off by very small and compact text or intentional spelling mistakes or non-conventional layouts or pretentious writing.

I myself considered House of Leaves to be very similar in style to many of my dreams: I don't remember what happened or why or who the characters were, but I remember how I felt during the entire experience.

Hope that helps.

>I started and finished the entire thing in a single day.
I have a hard time believing that.

>>4
Believe it. It's not as long as it looks, because many of the pages are largely blank.

>>5
I doubt you could have read it in one day, unless you mean 24 exactly 24 hours of reading. Sure, it isn't that long, really, but it's more than an afternoon read.

Also, you put it a good way. Pretentious. The bit I read was just that, and that was one of the most off putting things off all. That combined with the page layout bullshit turned me off completely. I can deal with idiosyncratic spelling and punctuation all day long. And the footnotes/appendices? Poe was a master of referencing things that didn't exist. I had no problem with that either. But the layout shit just makes me rage.

To me, what that says, is he, Mark Danielewski, did not feel his prose was strong enough to stand on it's own, as interesting and experimental as it might have been, so he decided to come up with a gimmick. That's all it was. A pretentious gimmick. The book would have been better without it.

Again, I'll admit that I never finished it. I only read a little bit of it before putting it down.

>>6
No I read it in around 6 hours. There's no trickery or wordplay there.

I liked the book, but I don't think I could bear another book like it. I flipped through Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and put it down in annoyance.

>>7
gimmicks in books are hard to pull off..

>>7
To be fair, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has much less layout dickery and much better prose.

>>9

Just as pretentious.

>>10
books can't be pretentious HA HA HA

Reading it in 6 hours and READING it is completely different.
I don't really think how long it took for one to read it is of any relevance, it takes much longer to cut it open and analyze it.
When you have time, it's something you should definitely read because as a reader i think it's important to just be aware of every kind of book out there.  As anon said before it was "interesting and experimental" (though a gimmick).
The first time i tried reading it, i couldn't get past chapter 1 because i was bored by it.  But there's much more action later on that i thought was amazing. So don't stop with 30 pages.
It was def an experience.

If you can read the following and get really into it? Then the book is for you:

xxx

To get a better idea try this: focus on these words, and whatever you do don't let your eyes wander past the perimeter of this page. Now imagine just beyond your peripheral vision, maybe behind you, maybe to the side of you, maybe even in front of you, but right where you can't see it, something is quietly closing in on you, so quiet in fact you can only hear it as silence. Find those pockets without sound. That's where it is. Right at this moment. But don't look. Keep your eyes here. Now take a deep breath. Go ahead, take an even deeper one. Only this time as you exhale try to imagine how fast it will happen, how hard it's gonna hit you, how many times it will stab your jugular with its teeth or are they nails?, don't worry, that particular detail doesn't matter, because before you have time to process that you should be moving, you should be running, you should at the very least be flinging up your arms-you sure as hell should be getting rid of this book-you won't have time to even scream.
Don't look.
I didn't.
Of course I looked.
I looked so fucking fast I should of ended up wearing one of those neck braces for whiplash.

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