Rating: 
Summary: on Houses, honey and haikus...
Review: Jarring confection,
Sweet sugar far less refined.
More than just dessert.
Rating: 
Summary: Strange Days
Review: "This is not for you"So starts the "House of Leaves" an incredible, complicated, fast paced, and at times tedious journey that details the downward spiral of the lives and minds of its characters as they come into contact (at varying degrees) with a "house" and what haunts it. As the book unfolds, the reader is seemingly eased into what becomes a malestrom of footnotes, differing storylines, and a plethora of information trying to describe and define just what is going on in this house (only to turn an abrubt 180 and shoot down the aforementioned theory- definately confusing the reader and casting doubt in their own theories). The ultimate purpose of all this is to take the reader on a journey similar to the character, one that maddens and frustrates as you find the footnotes reference themselves and some don't even exist, that many litrary references are indeed simply made up, that the text itself takes shape- crawling up the sides and becoming bullet paths and holes. In my humble opinion this book should not be placed in the category of "horror". For while it does (at times) terrify, that is not the great theme of it. Indeed the theme is not truly in the story itself, but in the way it is told. With its maddening precision and constant derision (directed at all) this book is NOT for you. This book is for one man alone.....the author. Because only he can truly understand it. However, if you do decide to try..... you will NOT be dissapointed. Not in the least. Like SOME body said,
"I did not finish this book....It finished me." True
Rating:
Summary: Who's afraid of the dark?
Review: I couldn't put this book down, even though I was terrified while reading it. I became afraid of my apartment, of being in rooms alone, of the closet door being left open. Read this book and you'll know why.
Rating:
Summary: YES YES YES YES YES
Review: Better than honey. Better than snow. Better than Hemingway. No lie.
Rating:
Summary: SPOOKY!!!!!
Review: Just a quick word to those considering buying a copy of House Of Leaves. I'm only a third of the way through it, so this isn't really a review, just a comment about my experience with it so far. There's something seriously spooky about this book. Several times, as I've been lost in it's pages, I've had the distinct feeling that someone was sneaking up on me. Scary.
Rating:
Summary: scary, but good, in a really, really scary way...er.
Review: House of Leaves will definately change you if you read it. After reading it myself, I have had to deal with passing(hopefully) bouts of insanity. Good stuff.
Rating:
Summary: Semiotic Psychosis
Review: There's a fine line between great art and magnificent, devouring psychosis, and I wouldn't want to bet upon which side the author is going to wind up. The novel is a multilayered absinthe cake of a horror story about the Navidsons - a family who find they live in a house that sprouts hallways to nowhere and then to terrible infinite nowhere for no reason at all. Their story is supposedly researched by a blind man, collected and organized by a gen-x drifter with a psychotic mother and footnoted to the eyeteeth with imaginary and almost believable references. Obsessional concern with lists and pseudophilosophical "quotes" abound. The author spent several months at the end making his text look like the horrible empty maze that he describes. Text can appear anywhere at any angle. There is a page written in Braille. The word "house" and all its translations appear in grey or another color, depending upon what edition you have. No reason, they just do. The book has been favorably compared with Pynchon's towering work "Gravities Rainbow" but it's a little of Pynchon, a little of 'Dude, Where's My Car' and a little of Poe (Edgar Allen, not the author's performance artist/musician sister, who, of course, wrote a CD of music to accompany House of Leaves). You won't like this book if you enjoy a conventional novel or even an eerie Steven King piece like the Langoliers. You'll like this book if you like huge complex novels, great literature and perhaps psychotic art. It's a magnificent toxic obsession of a book and it's amazing that Mark Z. Danielewski was able to remain tied to reality long enough to write it. It's not a book that he will ever be able to top because there's nowhere to go from this razor-sharp pinnacle but down. Doesn't matter. Five stars doesn't even come close. It's Armstrong on the Moon playing Jimi Hendrix while trying to read the time from Dali's plastic clocks. Amazing.
Rating:
Summary: Startling, Profound and Exquisite!
Review: I have to say this is the first book I have ever read that made my heart beat helplessly, in broad daylight! Granted, some people are not going to understand the intricacies in writing and storytelling that Danielewski has shown us here, but this is a marvel of a novel. Danielewski not only overlaps and collides two very different worlds, he brings together such real characters and personifies the true power of darkness. I was entranced by this novel and cannot wait for the next!
Rating:
Summary: This Guy Vs. David Foster Wallace
Review: OK, probably the main qualm most have with House of Leaves and its originality is its striking similarity to Wallace's Infinite Jest. Firstly, you can read either with the knowledge that both authors took years to write either manuscript (in the case of Danielewski, ten I believe), so both can be judged as wholly orignal, or as original as anything can be. Though what a pair! Similarities which include (though "this list is by no means exhaustive"):
1. Extended foot notes -- Both use long (occasionally tedious, usually intentionally so) footnotes in their novels to forward the plots momentum or create a mood. The main difference is that while Wallace usually reserves his footnotes for mainly inconsequential data (and the final bound pages), Danielewski's are often extended plots or potent motif within themselves which are built right into (often Inside) the narrative.
2. Subject matter -- Captivating film, many rounded characters, magic realism, math (my own private battlefield), obsessive fathers with neglected wives, multiple plots, post-post-postmodern (are we there yet?) tactics...
3. Narrator(S)-- Both novels utilize a series of narrators to offer new stories and plots.
4. Degree of difficulty -- Both novels, though highly rewarding, prod the reader through verbal labrynths and paper-cut inducing note-hunts. Hard to read, but in a fun "I-can't-believe-how-long-this-is-taking-me-but-won't-my-friends-and-former-teachers-be-impressed" way.
In the end, the fact alone that either of these books exist and were written by mere mortals (mere Young mortals) is testament to the standards we hold for good fiction today. There is usually a scarce number of good NEW books out there to read, so even if these two whales happen to look the same on the outside, you still won't know what hit you once you reach the last page (the term "last page" used loosely).
Rating: 
Summary: Some books are better left unread...
Review: ... and yet this isn't one of them. At this point you may look at those tiny two stars I gave Danielewski's book and think that I've got no clue what I'm talking about.
There IS method in my madness, which can hardly be said about the author of this most contradictory (mind you, I did not say "complex") book that would definetly look better in an art gallery rather than on my bookshelf, next to Stephen King's novels. Here's why I think this book is worth reading if and only IF you have plenty of free time on your hands.
The House of Leaves is supposed to work on so many levels that it eventually fails on pretty much each and everyone of them. The only part that's actually interesting (psychobabble and page layout aside) is the book within the book, the story of the fictional (?) Navidson Record. The rest is pretty much crap. Johnny Truant bugged the hell out of me and by the time he's had sex with the fifth or sixth woman both him and his rambling become boring (that is of course, if you're not into porn).
Danielewski (or Zampano, or ... whatever!) does a great job of creating a good premise with some pretty sharp characters (The Navidsons) and then screwing everything up with pompous "I'm so much smarter than you and I can write all this symbolic, choked-full with details and names, mumbojumbo that you probably don't get and don't care about but you'll just pretend so that you don't seem denser than carbon" style.
If you give up on Truant's foot notes and skip the pages that deal with technicalities, it may stil be not such a waste of time after all... which could explain some of the 5 star reviews I've read. But my main problem with "The House of Leaves" is that it's not for one moment neither "thrilling" nor "breathtakingly creepy", as some reviwers claim. As for "intelligent", that's up to you to decide...
There is one questions that arises: what if some "avangard" Hollywood (or indie) producer decides to make a movie about a guy who finds a fictional book about a fictional (?) movie... Then we're in the deep do-do!
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