Sunday, March 1, 2015

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

24800
3.5 Stars
 
Are you looking for a book with a plotline a little something like this????

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If so, House of Leaves might be right up your alley.

The simple synopsis (and the only one you're going to get from me) is this is the story of Will, Karen, and their dream home, told through various narrators.

I read House of Leaves before I started "writing" (a/k/a imaging) reviews. I don't make a habit of going back and posting something for a previously read novel, but occasionally I make an exception. House of Leaves is a book that deserves a review - mainly to justify the 3.5 Star rating.

To begin, reading this book is a daunting task. If anyone ever tries to tell you that House of Leaves was such an "easy read" you should immediately never talk to them again because they are huge liars. I'm not going to bullshit you. I mean, just look at a sample of what you're expected to wade through . . .

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Simple, right? Yeah, notsamuch. Looky here . . .

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Wait, it gets even worse better . . .

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The worst part is after all of the flipping and turning around of the book and wading through gazillions of footnotes and endnotes and probably banging your head against the wall more than once, you might be like me and find yourself left feeling a bit unfulfilled (or find that you found half of the story to be worthy of 5 Stars while the other have ranked a 2.5, at best). However, I think House of Leaves is one of those books that EVERYONE should attempt to read and I wish it would pop up on more of those "100 Books to Read Before You Croak" lists.

It's very rare that I have this type of reaction to a "scary" (kinda? sometimes???) story . . .

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But that house. Good godamighty that house!

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2 comments:

  1. Wow! What an original book! I can't believe the pages are built up like that. I want to read it solely for this reason, haha! :D

    Cucie @ Cucie reads

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  2. Oh! Amazing, I finally managed to find a review of House of Leaves! I've had it on my shelf for years since I heard about it somewhere through the grapevine, and have just never had the guts to start reading... It's so daunting with all the strange formatting eventhough that's what also attracted me to it to begin with :)

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