House of Leaves : A novel

Rating:
Summary: Groundbreaking! Excellent!
Review: House of leaves is a book I put off reading for a long time because I thought that it was not worth my time. When I saw the cover of the book and I saw that people were relating the writers work to Stephen King I thought that this book was going to be a very plain pointless novel that would have no effect on me and that I would forget in a few weeks.
Well, I started reading it anyway because every once in a while those pointless novels are fun to read. But I was surprised when I started the work just to see how original it was, this is not a regular old novel you're reading here. This is a work of art! For that reason, I thought, this piece of work would be a memorable one for me. Not one that I would forget in a few weeks like I had thought. When I continued reading the book I realized that this book is a very intelligent and thought provoking book. And now looking back at the book I see that it has become one of my favorite books for many reasons. It combines suspense, originality and thought provoking ideas and creates one of the most shocking and ground-breaking pieces of work in the history of literature.
That is a lot to say, I must admit, but it is not untrue. This piece of art (you can't even call it a novel! That would be very unfair) is amazing. You will be scared out of your mind in some moments of the novel, but you will not be able to put the book down. The book can be seen in a number of different ways concerning the philosophy, but I saw it as an existentialist piece of work. I don't feel I need to give you a plot summary because you can get that from other reviews.

I don't recommend buying this book in paperback because it has a lot of pages, and it might get ruined by a reckless reader. I am quite sure that once you've read it, you will probably end up buying it in Hardcover anyway because it is such a good book. I also recommend investing in a signed or first edition of this book, it will be worth a lot of money some day.

If you liked this book and are looking for more writers, I recommend Chuck Palahniuk if you have not read him. His books do not live up to, "The House Of Leaves" but they are very thought provoking and original as well.

Now I will rate the book from a scale of A-F as I do in my reviews for books:

Characters: B
Plot: A
Thought Provoking: A
Suspense: A

With an overall grade of an A, this book is definitely one that will live on a hundred years from now, and it is one that I will reread sometime.

Rating:
Summary: a tour de force of nothingness with a lil' pretentiousness
Review: first of all, this book doesn't rank with pynchon's "gravity's rainbow". in fact, it doesn't really stand to comparisons of any kind. it is in a class all it's own.
Danielewiski has synthesized poetry, philosophy and street smarts to create a genre all his own. the character of johnny truant is a bit cardboard, and i don't think even the most hardened thug is quite this 'cold'; in this sense, he makes the mistake of needing his characters to fit a too rigid profile.
while truant is a loveable caricature, navidson is believable; a passionate nietzschean with a sense of purpose that cannot be shaken by family, convention, etc. the blurbs about navidson in interviews and the text are invaluable. the author drives his point across in the increasingly insane and coherent text; there is no meaning to human life (as evidenced by navidson's frantic pursuit of the house's "basement", or endless darkness.)
don't waste your money, however, on the "whalestone letters". the letters from truant (gee, maybe the last name means something? gimme a break) must be nothing more than a big by the author to make money. but "house of leaves" is an anomaly, the kind of beautiful abberation that ends up on high school reading lists because of it's strange greatness. read it.

Rating:
Summary: dark corners...
Review: This book has an incredible ability to get inside your head. I spent many nights (because the book is long..and sometimes ponderous) staring into dark corners wondering could be hiding there. The story moves along steadily and has only a few dragging chapters. Read this one when you have some time to devote to it.

Rating:
Summary: I like it
Review: It's enjoyable. I'm not sure why, but it really crawled under my skin and creeped me out. I don't scare easily, but this book did put me in quite the state. Definitely not for those who are annoyed by the breaking of standard literary conventions.

Rating:
Summary: Complex, compelling...worth the journey.
Review: I was not sure I would enjoy this book when I first picked it up and saw...(gasp!) footnotes. But, despite the initial shock, I put this book through my in-store-two-paragraph-"grip" test. If a book does not grip me into its world in the first two paragraphs, I do not bother.

Not only did I make it through the first two paragraphs, but I had to force myself to stop after two pages. That was that. I took it home.

House of Leaves is a complicated book, no doubt, but just as it teeters on the point of losing you, the author pulls you back in with something curious...something just strange enough that you feel compelled to keep going. In many ways, your journey as a reader parallels the strange journey of the characters as they explore the house that is ever-changing and larger on the inside than it is on the outside.

I'm not going to tell you that I understood this book completely in my first and only reading. I thought I understood most of it by the time I finished the body of the book. And then I read one particular section of the Appendix. I realized at this point the profound implications of the book. I suddenly had new theories about the entire structure of the story and the symbolism of things.

For those of you who, like me, prefer fiction over non-fiction, do not be intimidated by the footnotes. Despite the brief boring sections of this book, the storyline holds you throughout. (Previous reviewers claim a lack of plot...I completely disagree.)

I think this book will appeal to readers who prefer dark, complex, psychological, and thought-provoking books, but who also want to be pulled into another world. This is definitely not a quick summer read, but it is well worth the journey you take into the house on Ash Tree Lane and, more importantly, into the minds of the characters.

Rating:
Summary: Despite superbly sinister premise, this is a clunker.
Review: A big disappointment, and no horror classic despite what the blurb (and it's narrator Johnny Truant) would have you believe. As a stylist, Danielewski is painfully limited and awkward. Which is a shame, as the central premise of the house's nightmarish 'underworld' is highly original and unnerving, but the author is never able to really put fire in the belly of his creation.
Equally Danielewski's inability to make enough of the book's myriad diversions and off-shoots engaging or interesting undermines the whole undertaking at a structural level, and the reader is likely to start skipping increasingly large sections. The pseudo-academic analyses that pepper the narrative are tedious and pretty unconvincing, although allowances must be made for the equally bogus nature of American pseudo-academia that he is satirising. Johnny Truant does become a more engaging narrator towards the end, but his sense of increasing terror and paranoia is never really convincing, or, crucially, becomes at all throat-clutching for the reader. The ending of the main (Navidson) story is jarringly conventional given what has been conjured up before; you can be forgiven for feeling that hidden beneath all the flashy encrustations, the author had a fine idea that he ultimately found himself unable to really run with.

Rating:
Summary: Bret Easton Ellis must be smoking crack
Review: to even think of comparing Danielewski to David Foster Wallace. House of Leaves is an overdone amalgam with no heart; worse, it isn't even scary. Eminently missable.

Rating:
Summary: probably the best book I've read to date
Review: Danielewski is either a genies or insane, perhaps both. This book is the most involving, deepest, scarriest, and saddest book I have read yet.

The book is a sort of story wihtin a story within a story. Danielski uses a mix of prose(which apparently someone related to a text book... its actual much more of a scientific finding/theory, not at all text book like, not very many parts of the book are like this, but its neat and intresting to say the least...) narration, and notes to increase the depth of the novel. Many times I found myself asking, is this really jsut fiction, is there no actual basis; other times I found myself wishing some of ti was factual, some part of it somewhere. For all of this to be from one mind is simply amazing. This book was very fun to read as well, not only in a comedic sense form part to part, but also getting to flip the book around, and trying to tie in connections.

the 700 pages may seem a bit much at first, but once you get going... you find youself wishing it were even logner... at least I did... and I'm used to reading things at max around 400 pages...

I'll be buying his next book for sure.

Rating:
Summary: This book didn't give me nightmares, it is one
Review: This is by far the worst thing I have EVER read. It reads like a textbook, which I think it's supposed to (great idea, really great). No character development, story, plot, climax, or anything remotely interesting. I would rather be a gerbal on Fire Island during an Elton John concert than read this book again.

Rating:
Summary: House of [expletive deleted]
Review: I am midway through Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, and I must admit that the Pynchon reference on the back cover absolutely baffles me. It seems to me that Mr. Danielewski has simply created a sterile amalgam of Infinite Jest, Pale Fire, Rules of Attraction, and, like, a Dean Koontz novel that you might buy at an airport. Nowhere (thus far) in the novel do I see anything remotely resembling Pynchon's writing - speaking in terms of stylistics, story, diction, aesthetics etc. - except perhaps the protagonist's name; "Johnny Truant" has a certain Pynchonesque resonance. The text formatting, besides being annoying, also seems to me a bit sophmoric. "Oh I get it! The reader's experience in untangling the upside-down, out-of-sequence footnotes mirrors the plight of Navidson et al as they explore the Labrynthine interior of the House (in blue hypertext)!" Big deal. Fourth graders write poems about kitty cats in the shape of kitty cats, but that doesn't make them (the poems) enjoyable to read. Or new. Or "Postmodern." Do yourself a favor and read the books from which this novel is derived instead.