Rating: 
Summary: The novel that reads like a movie
Review: "The house of Leaves" is not a half-ass read. This Novel is groundbreaking filled with beautiful as well as dark imagery. Remember the telephone game when you were little? That is what this book is about, A story told by someone who heard the story from someone else who heard the story from someone else. The main character Johnny Truant becomes obsessed with telling this story which he heard about through the notes of a dead blind man named Zampano about a family whose House is larger on the inside than the outside. Hallways appear out of nowhere and the father feels the need to explore. With that said read the book. I liked this novel because it breaks a lot of literary rules, for instance there is a part where the characters are lost in a hallway and to read it you literally have to flip the book around, the text is sometimes written backwards, in reverse, written so that you have to place the book in front of a mirror to read the mirror image. This allows the reader to really get lost in the book. WHile reading it I started to have strange and bizarre dreams and from others I have talked to the same thing has occured. This book is not an easy read, but once you finish you feel as if you have truly accomplished something.
Rating:
Summary: One Of The Best
Review: I read House of Leaves almost three years ago. I was in a creative writing class, and one of the students who was familiar with my work told me about Mark K. Danielewski's book. I went out and bought the book several days later, and from the first page I was instantly drawn in. The inner thoughts of the main character was stunning. I felt at times that he was in my room with me speaking into my ear. I think the character's name was Johnny. Like I said, it's been a while since I read the book, but since I've given the book to a friend who I told had to read it, and I've bought it as gifts for two other friends. And whoa, the story of the Navidsons. This was incredible. The idea of the house they lived in holding such horror. Emptiness, or nothing, perhaps, is the greatest terror of them all, and House of Leaves captures this fear and relates it to the reader so that we, too, share in the nightmare of the characters who explore the house.
As great as this book was, I do admit that there were sections throughout the book that I skimmed over or skipped altogether. Some of the explanation was a little too dull and uninteresting. Some of the explanations were definitely too long. But all in all, I think House of Leaves is one of the greatest books ever written, and I'm sure it will make an immortal out of its author, Mark Z. Kanielewski.
Rating:
Summary: House of Leaves
Review: This is the greatest book I have ever read. Unfortunately it is so good, that nothing I have read since seems worth finishing. If you attempt to read this book, I recommend that you put aside two weeks, in which you have no responisibilites. Find a safe room, disconnect the phone, lock yourself in, Prepare food, that you don't have to cook.
Get yourself a mirror, a morse code key, pencil and paper. Don't read this book if you are agoraphobic, afraid of the dark, or have nightmares about looming staircases. Don't be alarmed if you lose track of days, forget to eat, go to the bathroom,forget who you are, or have nightmares in which you awake to find yourself still in a nightmare about a dark enormous looming staircase with no way out. Make sure that you have a friend to help you nearby, if it all goes wrong. If I ever meet Mark Z. Danielewsky, I will tell him he is a genius an then run away from him very very fast,
Rating: 
Summary: A treatise on existentialism?
Review: 4.5 Stars. Let me start out by saying that I do not consider myself some intellectual, post-modernist genious or anything like that. I am just a normal person, who enjoys reading (I mainly read fantasy and Clive Barker novels). When I first saw this book I was intrigued by the layout of the novel...the use of the color blue for house, the pages with upside down writting, the footnotes, etc. That however was also the same reason I decided not to purchase it. I thought that it would be just a little too much for me; that author of this book obvisouly had an agenda and for the first time I questioned my ability to grasp the material...would it be too much for me. After talking to other people who read the book and hearing their glowing recounts of it, I finally picked it up and began reading. I think it took me almost a month to go through this book. And I have to agree with the other reviewer(s) who said that this reading pace was not decided by me, but by the author. There is no question about it, this author was manipulating me. I loved everything about this book. I can't even begin to describe the impact it had on me. I was obsessed over it. I told everyone I could about it. Mark Danielewski narrative style is beyond brilliant. Johnny's passages bordered on poetic. I loved the manipulations done to the text and the layout, it helped drive home the idea that I was being lead around and maniupulated by the author (I have never had that samed feeling from reading any other book). I almost wish I had a doctoral degree in modern literature or something so I could right a proper review of this novel.
Rating:
Summary: Unusual and Intriguing
Review: House of Leaves is a great alternative to the everyday books you find at the library. For one thing, the word 'house' is always printed in blue, and much of the text is written upside down or diagonally, or is artfully sprawled across the pages. The book basically plays upon the fear of darkness and the unknown, and its eerie story, unusual presentation and it's intruiging style of narrating slowly captivate and enthrall readers. Mark Danielewski took 10 years to write House of Leaves, and the result is a book that is unlike anything written before. Having said this, House of Leaves isn't for everyone. It's a great book, but only for people who like to think and people who enjoy unusual, dark or macabre things. It's also not the easiest book to read, not because it uses big words or is written at a higher reading level, but because it gradually gets more and more incoherent. Basically, if you'd like an interesting, smart book that will genuinely creep you out, read House of Leaves. If not, you're better off sticking to Harry Potter.
Rating: 
Summary: Ugg! ugg! Next Vidiot invent um wheel!
Review: HOUSE OF LEAVES has got to be one of THE most long winded, pretentious, geeky, pointless books I have ever attempted to read. I checked it out of my local library after reading all the rave reviews on the inside jacket of the book and after taking it home and attempting to read it, came to the conclusion that a) Either the people who love this plotless book come from another planet from the rest of us. b) People like me who read books to enjoy a good, entertaining story are not up to the pseudo-intellectual level of these nerds who can see brilliance in this doorstop/telephone book for ETs.
I can't help wondering if Bret Easton Ellis was intoxicated when he gave his praise for HOUSE OF MANURE. But seriously, any guy who wrote AMERICAN PSYCHO with entire pointless chapters dedicated to Huey Lewis And The News et al must have toked a fair bit of the old waccy baccy into his lungs during his lifetime (though I loved GLAMORAMA and LESS THAN ZERO was pretty good).
For you average people as a safety precaution when returning this book to the library, it would be a good idea to heavily bandage your hands so you don't graze your knuckles when they scrape along the pavement. Me always have that problem.
Rating:
Summary: Prepare to be amazed and scared witless
Review: As others have commented, this book plays on one of our most basic of fears: the fear of darkness, being alone, and large, cold spaces. No one likes any of these conditions. When I first picked up the book and started reading it, I wasn't entirely sure if it was real or not. But even when I figured out that it was entirely fictional, that didn't do much to reduce the, for lack of a better or more descriptive term, terror. But not of the Boo jump out of the trees sort of way. More like in a psychological, screw you up for several weeks after you put the book down, sort of way. This is definitely NOT bedtime reading, lest of course you wish for horrific dreams of large, black stairways, and black great rooms with no chance for light.
Rating:
Summary: Boring, boring, boring
Review: Don't let anyone fool you into thinking that this is a piece of entertaining literature. It was tedious reading, and after finishing it I realized to my dismay that I had wasted hours of my life which I will never be able to regain. Read it and weep, or pass on this book and spend your time on novels which are actually enjoyable.
Rating:
Summary: and then some
Review: This novel is the beginning of a change in literature. Welcome to the computer age where a novel's orginality isn't based on what it's about but the format it's presented in. This book gets inside your head, and even if you're not afraid while you're reading it you will be. It touches a fear that everyone has inside of them and brings it to the surface and makes them face it. The fear of being out of control, the fear of the dark, claustrophobia, ect. Whatever petty things scare you this will amplify it. Let yourself fall into this book. Anyone who gives this novel less than five stars is retarded or didn't understand it. -jb
Rating:
Summary: Genius!
Review: Well, as someone already mentioned, the book has a WARNING not to read it. Also, in the part where authors say this book is for so and so, this books says "This book is not for you." This book can be confusing because the plot is about Johnny but in the midst of his footnotes there is Nadivson and some other information, written like an essay. Im not going to even TRY to explain it, its just weird. But lets just say that I'm kinda freaked out that my closet will suddenly be a huge, vast, infinite hallway. The book was not scary like watching a horror film but it's very creppy. It has psychological fear because there isn't ANYTHING like it so you imagine everything and you have your opinion about it. The fear is in your imagination.
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