House of Leaves: The Remastered Full-Color Edition by Mark Z. Danielewski
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Web ID: 14352407Celebrate the power of a physical book
The juxtaposition between Zampano’s text and Johnny’s is brilliant for keeping pace. Each time I felt the story from one or the other bogging down, there was a switch in storyteller to reignite. They are so different that their voice alone propels the story. The formatting reveals the unraveling of our characters and the depth of the house in excellent ways. The labyrinth chapter, for example, IS an example of a labyrinth itself. You do more turning and flipping in this chapter than you have before this point. It brings the material to life. This book feels like it was written to celebrate the power of a physical book. This can’t be an audiobook or, even, a successful ebook. The constant flipping, the strain from holding such a large book, the use of white space to tell another story, and the pages that forced you to turn the book all add to the mystery and the immersion, celebrating books as an experience for the reader. This book is the DEFINITION of a niche. It’s not for any reader. It’s immersive, intense, and multi-layered. Before reading this one I was warned by countless others that it was an “experience” you had to be “ready” for. Completely agree with that sentiment. My Rating: 3 Stars If you’re in the right frame of mind and you come at this to analyze, unravel, and study this one … you get the hype. For Full Review: https://alltherightreads.com/2025/05/05/2025-book-review-house-of-leaves/
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Bold and Challenging - The Definition of Art
A stimulating experience that uses word count and paragraph spacing as a plot device. Danielewski tells a story by telling a different story. Defying logic is the point, and this book gets the point across.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Large flaccid format paperback turned me off
I couldn't even read this book. The new large format paperback book is so hard to hold. It's floppy and just too big to hold one handed. I DNF specifically because of the size of this flaccid book.
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Messy, uninteresting, empty for all it contains
"House of Leaves" begins with the words, “This is not for you.” It was right in my case and, I dare say, for anyone who likes good books. Some people have described the positively glacial pace of this story as a slow burn. It burns so slowly, in fact, that the fuel source is entirely intact by the end. The novel is ridiculously light on plot even with two mostly unrelated storylines running concurrently. Each one is sufficient for a short story, but even taken together, they cannot adequately fill the allotted pages in this book. To make matters worse the story randomly switches back and forth between the plotlines through the use of footnotes, a term I use here in the broadest possible sense. This stylistic choice is far from the only unorthodox decision in this book. Extraordinarily unusual use is made of text layout and orientation in an attempt to produce feelings of claustrophobia, acrophobia, confusion, and many other effects. I am not necessarily opposed to unusual visual arrangements of text to induce desired emotions or feelings, but this book is ridiculous on its face in this area and, more importantly, fails to produce the desired emotions. Additionally, the story is constantly interrupted by scientific-like examination of the story, treatises on marginally related topics (ex. explaining the science of echoes), and frequent forays into the drug fueled sexual escapades of a person who is reading or perhaps writing the very book we are reading. These idiosyncrasies draw attention to themselves and this, combined with a format seemingly designed to separate the reader from the action, a person writing a journal about a book about a documentary about a haunted house, ruins any chance of immersion and makes the novel feel very safe. Not once during my reading of this book did I feel anything remotely approaching fear, despite the fact that I am normally a wuss about such things. The only positives are a joke I found pretty funny, and the fact that it is a relatively short and easy read once you move past the clutter. In sum, "House of Leaves" is messy, remarkably empty, uninteresting, not scary, and fails in almost every way to accomplish what it sets out to do. I do not recommend anyone to purchase it except, perhaps, as a prank gift.
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Great book, also a question
I really liked this book. But can anyone tell me what this is on page 510?
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Throughly Engaging
I think it works so well because it weaves its influences throughout the narrative without being overly dependent upon allusion while also remaining consistently original in a genre that is full of self-doubting imitators.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
This book makes me go insane (in a good way)
So, I had to pick two books for high school summer reading this past year. I had heard about this book from Power Pak's myhouse.WAD video, and decided to check it out! I went into this knowing close to nothing, except for that it was hard to read for even adults, and being 14 at the time (15 now) I took this as a challenge. I am a pretty fast reader. This book took me three weeks to read. I absolutely love how it was structured, like you were going through a maze of your own while the characters were as well. How it managed to give me a physics lesson alone in my room but a list of Lude's sexual preferences at the beach is beyond me, though. Love this book.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
4 stars
HOUSE OF LEAVES by Mark Z. Danielewski I don’t know what possessed me to choose this 700+ page tome as my first book for 2024, but I do love a challenge… Reading this was a bizarre (mind f*ck) experience. Not only was the text formatting all over the place (literally sideways, diagonal, upside down and backwards) the footnotes were a separate, tangent filled story on their own. Oh, and if you can read music that comes in handy! This isn’t a book you can read quickly, it demands your attention and patience. You will have to work for the story. In some instances you’ll be flipping back to re-read previous sections. In other chapters you’ll want to add margin notes or fill in blanks. Then the last bit there’s a message to decode. Bless the interwebs for providing the answers for my queries! In short, I enjoyed this. It’s not particularly scary or suspenseful, but I appreciate the author’s meticulous effort in creating such a labyrinthine story. Sure, it’s pretentious and gimmicky, but I didn’t mind it. This book might not be for you, but it was for me. Rating: 4/5 ⭐️
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com