House of leaves is a visual experience! While reading you literally risk to get lost inside his labyrinth of word and columns. I mean seriously
I recently told a friend about it having read it back when it came out. I’ve since lost my copy, but said friend arrived with one a few weeks ago as a gift. I’m looking forward to diving back into the insanity of it again. It’s a page turner, and twister, and rotator.
What a book! I’ve only ever gotten about 80 pages into it but I’m planning for my next expedition very soon. I think this time I’m going to sit with sticky tabs and a notebook and try and really make sense of it.
Remember to bring your light and tons of strings. You don’t want to get lost in there. 👍
I’m literally reading it for the first time at the moment - about 100 pages in.
So far it’s very intriguing, and I’m sure all the best is yet to come. It’s presentation and structure alone is compelling.
That being said, I’d be slow to recommend it so far. It’s nigh impenetrable in some parts 😅
Are you following all the footnotes and whatnot? My first time, I skipped all that and read it straight through. I’m going to read it again at some point and really dive in.
I’m reading all the footnotes, although admittedly somewhat glossing over the ones which are purely citations, making reference to other books/magazines which may or may not even exist. I still try and read their titles though as they sometimes give a little insight to underlying themes.
The only thing I’m not doing it skipping about within the book itself, like where it says to check an appendix for more info - I figure I’ll get to those bits in due course, and don’t want to break-up the flow too much, or inadvertently lose my page 😅
Whether or not that’s the “right” way to go about things, I couldn’t say.
What I’m struggling with so far is that the language itself can be quite tricky in places (mostly the main body of text discussing the Navidson Record so far), and when Johnny’s sprawling footnotes start getting a bit nonsensical. Neither points are huge issues - you just have to pay attention with the former, and roll with the latter - but they do have me re-reading the same sentence over again in places where I’m trying to keep up 😅
As I say, enjoying it so far, but you’ve got to really engage.
I read it a long time ago. The format is interesting, novel certainly. I suppose it’s the selling point, over the prose.
To me it seemed like there were many competing “ways” to read it as well. Like a maze, you can go different paths. Do you read it front to back? Niggle through the citations? Thread back through the holes? It’s not often you get a book that has this much re-read value.
Total unrelated note, anyone played “My House” the Doom mod. It’s pretty fun
