“I love how the book itself is a labyrinth.”
“The author's sister is the singer Poe, and she has an album "Haunted" that's inspired by this book, and somewhat of a companion piece to it. Her song "Angry Johnny" was on the radio about 10 or so years ago, and it contains excerpts of the author reading from the book. Check it out. The whole thing is very eerie. Not as out there as the book, but really interesting and a good album. ”
“I read this book a couple of years ago and I loved it. I'm thinking of reading it again after I saw that xkcd comic.”
“I adore the book. It bites you in the ass when you're not looking.”
“I've been reading this book and am having problems getting into it, but I'm trudging through. Today I saw this comic: http://xkcd.com/472/ Great parody of the book :)”
“what a book !!! i enjoeyd the rading, even if i lost myself in its pages, like into a maze :) great, unusual reading experience!”
“A book I've recommended more than any other.”
“It took ten years for Danielewski to write this book so when I first read it I tried to get past the skin of it because I had a feeling there would be something there. This book's definitely one of the more rewarding ones on my shelf because I've read it seven times and each time has been different. For better or worse, it is the kind of book that seems to be alive, and requires a lot of work from the reader to put it to rest. (you'll need notes, history, research, discussions, and theories... my copy of the book is a mess). ”
“What an effective work of art... Frankly, the degree to which it enraged so many people is beautiful. This piece is being immortalized by those who love and hate it alike.”
“This book was incredibly dull pseudointellectual gimmickery. Bret E. Ellis's much touted blurb should be embarrassing to him, but more so to those who buy his books. To mention Danielewski's charade in the same sentence as Pynchon, Wallace, and Ballard shows only that Ellis hasn't read any of those other writers. King, who is indeed the King of Hacks, is a proper comparative I suppose.In Infinite Jest Wallace used copious footnotes to help tell the story. In House of Leaves there is one footnote that helps tell the story, and that is the group of letters from Johnny Truant's institutionalized mother. Those letters are the best part of the book. The rest is typing. 99% of the footnotes can be ignored, and as you approach the end, you can pretty much skip every other paragraph to the finish. Fake scholarly works inserted into a rewriting of The Amityville Horror (or pick your haunted house story) do not make it scholarly. Lots of Latin and Greek references do not make it intellectual, and telling a story within a story does not make it literary when you don't care about the people involved. None of these characters is particularly endearing, and putting the words on the page in imitation of the geography the characters are experiencing is impressive only to those easily impressed. High school kids probably love this book. Or college business administration majors.Anyone who wants a challenge or to read something experimental should try Robert Coover's The Public Burning or John Hawke's The Beetle Leg.If this book changed your life, you need to get out more, go to a bookstore, then get in more.There is nothing deep or deeply intellectual about this book, it is not a difficult read, unless you are unable to physically turn the book to read upsidedown or sideways, and there is certainly nothing to lead any well-read person to compare it to Wallace, Pynchon, or Ballard. THere was not one sentence in this book that made me laugh the way Wallace does, or marvel at its genius the way Pynchon does. As many have pointed out, it is simply dull. I think a lot of people probably love the fact that they can say they read a 700 page book that is actually about 100 pages long if all the nonsense is removed and there aren't 20 pages with only one sentence or one word on them.Most of all it's dull. I usually toss aside a book this boring, but I wanted to be able to review it in its entirety. I don't know Danielewski personally, but as a writer he and Ellis are a good pair, all hype. Two literary big hats with absolutely no cattle. ”
