Rating: 
Summary: Gets you hooked
Review: When I first started reading this book, I was like "Eh, okay, whatever". But as I progressed, I found it hard to put down. When I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it. I also found myself taking it with me wherever I go just in case I'll have an extra few minutes. The thing I like the best is the typeset-- it keeps changing as the house changes. Crazy, but brilliant. Definitely one of the best books I've read.
Rating: 
Summary: Much Ado About Nothingness
Review: This is an excellent horror tale with a big, fat load of window dressing (mostly contained in bloated footnotes and appendices). If you don't have a month of your life to devote to it, just read the main narrative (Zampopo's diary), skip the rest, and leave yourself some free time to go outside and exercise.
Rating: 
Summary: Thought provoking and haunting
Review: I have read various twisted novels, but this one left me in a state of intense turmoil. Each page is filled with disturbing details and mind-blowing suspense. After having found a monograph called The Navidson Record, a book based on a documentary that was written by a blind man named Zampano, Jonny Truant's life is not the same. And after having read House of Leaves, I, like Truant, haven't been able to forget this incredible piece of work. Luckily, I, unlike Truant, don't have nightmares because of it. This is not a book that you can pleasantly read on the beach; it demands your undivided attention. I marvel at Mark Z. Danielewski's talent and genius. I highly recommend House of Leaves. Now run along and get it!
Rating:
Summary: The Five and a Half Minute Meta-Narrative
Review: Where are you right now? Are you sitting in your office? your bedroom? a library? a study? Or are you anywhere you can really describe? Now, just look at these words and think about nothing else except these words and what you might be in for if you read HOUSE OF LEAVES. Are you blocking out the edges of your peripheral vision yet? Until you do, then you do not know what this book could even possibly be about. It's an exercise in psychology . . . the discomfort of not knowing what you cannot know . . . or not wanting to know what you do know . . . or knowing it and knowing that you know it and want to know it but pretending that you either don't actually know it or don't really want to know it (even though you do). There are several layers to this novel. There are several parallel stories, each of which is interesting on its own terms. Each of the stories is incomplete, not that this fact really matters because each might be as complete as possible or not incomplete at all. Incidentally, the novel is decent in spite of itself. Danielewski, Truant, Zampano, and Navidson (the parties responsible for this work) are each a bit self-indulgent on a regular basis (or is Danielewski strictly taking the satire to an even deeper level?). Ultimately, you actually know the answer . . . even though you really don't . . .
Rating:
Summary: House of Leaves is an ultra-promising debut
Review: In all the crazy fuss surrounding this novel--much of which it deserves--something has been lost: a sense of history. This book fits comfortably into a past defined by the work of Pynchon, Alasdair Gray, Nabokov, and others. Very few of the devices used by the author are unique, although he does use them well, for the most part. His use of footnotes, however, is often out of control, to the point that he begins to annihilate his own central narrative--a narrative that, despite the horror aspects, is really a love story. This is the strength of the novel: the central relationship between the photographer and his wife. I'm a writer and, to be honest, I could not tell whether my irritations with the narrative were because I wished I had actually written the book or because the book does have some flaws. Regardless, this is great stuff and I can't wait to read his next novel.
Rating:
Summary: Intellectual Pseudo-Horror
Review: If you only purchased this book because you dug the cover and picked it up, found crazy things happening on the pages and couldn't resist it, then you're probably about to write a rave review on Amazon! "House of Leaves" take on a life of its own as you read through it like no other book I've ever touched! It functions on an intellectual level while remaining genuinely creepy. The idea that your world might suddenly begin to subtly shift for the worse every time you look away is much more frightening than green mucous crawling out of a swamp to eat a town of morons! It works on you as you read, when you find yourself looking up to make sure that the movement you thought you saw out of the corner of your eye was really nothing at all. The sheer number of fake references and supporting material gives this narrative the illusion of reality. Come on, who didn't fake a source on a bibliography in school? Finally, it's being put to good use! I give my highest praise and recommendations for this inventive novel and its ever larger following. Don't miss this one!
Rating:
Summary: A unique take on horror
Review: I must admit: This was the only book I've ever read that truly scared me. Despite it possibly being "gimmicky", it is an intelligent read, as it twists between so many styles of writing; mainly the documentarian Zampano or the avant garde Johnny Truant. I'm not sure which style I liked more, but it was a good mixture. The hundreds of footnotes, however, I found unneccesary and a joke after awhile. Maybe they were meant to be over-the-top or they just came out that way. Still, the book is extremely complex, mood provoking, and epic in scope. Definitely recommended for any horror fans or for people who want a scary novel with a bit more depth. Since this is only Danielewski's first novel, he's definitely an author to keep an eye out for.
Rating: 
Summary: Horror Section?
Review: This is absolutly the worst "book" I have ever read! "A great novel", "Sublimely creepy", "House of Leaves actually gave me nightmares". These are some of the comments on the back cover that caught my attention. This "book" is full of appendixes, footnotes, and "anyalitical critiques" from "outside experts" commenting on what is suposed to be the main story. If there was a main story here, it went way passed me. I purchased this book for a new experience in horror fiction. The only thing horrific about it was the $20.00 I wasted on buying it. If you feel you need to read this book because of how interesting the reviewers make it sound, take my advise, check it out from your local library. Makes for an easy return.
Rating: 
Summary: Better Than A Poke in The Eye
Review: House of Leaves is ambitious, I'll give it that much. Not many writers have been able to take experiments with the form into the mainstream and do it successfully. And, yes, Danielewski takes expermental forms into the mainstream, but he doesn't do it successfully. It's an interesting book to look at. A good converstation piece, something for the coffeetable, but the story is more than a little weak. Conceptually, the story of the house, the documentary, is facinating. In the first fifty pages or so, it is even a bit chilling. But, unfortunately, it is a novel with two stories: and the man who brings it to us, Johnny Truant, is barely a character, and even if he existed in more than two dimensions I wouldn't care. I found myself while reading the book cursing aloud when Danielewski tried some weak transition into Truant's portions of the book -- stories, mainly, of the women who threw themselves at him and with whom he slept with in a rather pathetically disoriented fashion. While I applaud the attempt to write a horror novel in a different mode, I found myself wishing the story had been told in a more straightforward fashion. Boiled down to the element that anyone would care about, it had the ideas of Stephen King's best work and the execution of a pimply high school kid who's just read Pynchon for the first time. In fact, to read the press on the book jacket now, I'm offended that Danielewski's forgettable, gimmicky book should be compared to people like Pynchon who tell a story in an avante garde fashion. They tell their stories in such a way because that's the only way they can really be told. Danielewski tells his story that way because he thinks it's cool.
Rating:
Summary: Not for the Soft
Review: My friend, who equates reading with relaxing, couldn't get past the first few chapters of House of Leaves. The lesson? This book is not for the passive reader. You must be actively involved in the story, racking your brain to make connections, in order to "get it." After three weeks of constant discussion with other readers, I feel like I'm starting to "get it," but know there's still much more to figure out. If that's the kind of book you like, House of Leaves is one for you. House of Leaves is a story of three characters who are separated by time and space, but who are nevertheless tied together by works of art. How each affects the others' lives depends entirely on how each character perceives the others in light of their own circumstances, histories and points of view. Casual readers, beware -- this is a postmodern work, and one aspect of postmodernism is to address the telling of stories themselves. Linearity is questioned and subverted in House of Leaves, to great and satisfying effect within the greater scheme of the book. (Those who enjoyed Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon" will immediately draw comparisons). I'm rather surprised by those people who find that there's nothing "new" about Danielewski's construction of the book -- the footnotes in particular seem to draw readers' ire -- as if that were important. House of Leaves is not attempting something new for the sake of newness -- it is utilizing footnotes to best compliment the deep structure of the story. And it works spectacularly. A hint: Bone up on your Greek and Norse myths.
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