joshoonet's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
- The very core story of the Navidson Record is incredibly interesting and thrilling. I love the descriptions of their explorations and the uncertainty that comes with them.
- Zampanòs huge passages of discussing certain words and picking apart their meanings nearly made me stop reading, out of pure disconnection with the content. Even if it related to the core story. My god.
- Can only recommend checking out the appendixes as one goes along, they provide a more thorough understanding of the text. Although the same can't be said about the hints to other chapters. That got too confusing for me.
- LOVED the code that could be found and potentially deciphered here and there. I'm sure i missed some too.
- Overall: high concentration needed to read this, but worth it in the end. I'll keep thinking about it for a while, but won't be picking it up again anytime soon.
Graphic: Blood, Addiction, Violence, Sexual content, Panic attacks/disorders, Gore, and Mental illness
Moderate: Injury/injury detail, Animal death, Alcohol, Rape, Alcoholism, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Child abuse, Drug abuse, Sexism, Death, and Drug use
Minor: Infidelity, Death of parent, Abandonment, Cancer, Car accident, and Vomit
Long, purely informative passages about the background and meaning of specific terms or topics can be skipped or skimmed. On the topic of sexual content and misogyny:Spoiler
truant's stories are laden with viewing women only as sexual objects; these parts can be skipped without losing too much of the plot.reggiethebird's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
Graphic: Murder, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Alcohol, Blood, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Violence, and Animal death
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts
Minor: Rape and Vomit
blobvis's review
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Spoiler
Anyways, this books follows the story of Johnny who found the so called Navidson records, an essay about a film that probably has never existed and is written by the man who lived in the apartment before him. As the reader you are experiencing the story of Navidson at the same time as Johnny is. Which it think it pretty neat. What makes this book fun however is not the endless, quite boring footnotes with Johnny's drugs and sex life, or the long explanation about why there is a parallel between Navidson and his brother and a part of the Bible. What makes it interesting is how the writer uses lettering, spacing and the layout of the pages to emphasise the scenes. Something that made me laugh in wonder because I did not expect to have tot turn the book upside down to read it further.Sometimes the pages only contain a few words making you turn the pages quickly and feeling the tension of the scene and the feelings of the characters in twofold.
As well as I think that it's interesting that the deeper Navidson goes into the house the more unstable Johnny becomes. I really like how there are so much parallels between the essay and Johnny's life, and between the characters in the essay itself (although the essay seems to be mainly written to find those parallels). I do love the editors' footnotes, they made me laugh. And in the end I didn't mind Johnny's footnotes that much because they became less frequent and more focused aka he stopped doing drugs and stopped talking about how much he fucked. And I did like reading his last notes on the book.
In any case I basically read a rather interesting essay instead of a book so 4 stars because it's just really creative and I love creativity
And as I heard there are some secrets in it too as well as an dedicated community to find it. Not my cup of tea but maybe for others the reason to read it.
Moderate: Animal death, Child abuse, and Sexual content
Minor: Alcohol, Injury/injury detail, Drug use, Death of parent, Addiction, Emotional abuse, and Physical abuse
booksaregodly's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Blood, Injury/injury detail, Suicidal thoughts, Gore, Mental illness, Cursing, Death, Vomit, Violence, Confinement, Medical trauma, and Suicide
Moderate: Grief, Toxic relationship, Sexual content, Gun violence, Alcoholism, and Alcohol
Minor: Death of parent
bealittlebrave's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Graphic: Alcohol, Confinement, Mental illness, Drug use, Forced institutionalization, Addiction, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Gun violence
Moderate: Grief, Death, Child death, Suicidal thoughts, Injury/injury detail, and Gun violence
akiram's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Graphic: Alcohol, Animal death, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Animal cruelty, Domestic abuse, Death, Drug abuse, Addiction, Bullying, Child abuse, Suicide, Alcoholism, Body horror, Suicidal thoughts, and Toxic relationship
gentle_garbage_baby's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Violence, Mental illness, Drug use, Addiction, Blood, Drug abuse, Sexual content, and Sexism
Moderate: Forced institutionalization, Gun violence, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death of parent, and Domestic abuse
Minor: Alcohol, Car accident, Rape, and Sexual assault
melliedm's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
0.5
House of Leaves is a stack of papers containing the academic paper an old shut-in wrote about a possibly non-existent documentary film, compiled by a young man who filched the work in progress from the old man’s apartment after he died. And all of that is put together by another editor. The piece is layered, absolutely, but not in an organic way, and not in a compelling way, just in a patience-testing way.
The academic essay goes from recounting the exact moments of the film to pontificating on echoes to recounting the moments on the film in a format that had me mourning the many trees turned to pulp for the thousands of copies of this book. (Single paragraphs, single words, single sentences at “””evocative””” angles, pages dedicated to telling us that what should be on the page is missing.) the essay is dotted with hundreds of footnotes, which are almost all meaningless, and stretch the read time unnecessarily. The essay is not all bad. On occasion there is something interesting raised, or a tension that begins to build… Each time something intriguing begins to happen in this recounting of the documentary, though, in comes the footnote from our other writer.
His name is Johnny Truant and he does drugs and drinks and has a lot of sex—graphic sex, sex written from the perspective of someone who clearly fetishizes women, to the point of fetishizing their skin colour if they happen to not be white. His constant interruptions to the essay are eyeroll inducing because nothing in his sob story is interesting, nothing in it is gripping, nothing in it makes him a character I feel interested in learning more about. I thought perhaps we were supposed to hate him—but then comes in a letter to the editor from an 18 year old girl who knew him talking about how cool he was. Uhhhh, what? So here I am, reading the women he objectifies in his life as the character objectifying them, but this “from the horse’s mouth” moment tells me that nah, you’re reading it wrong. Christ on a stick. This of course culminates in some horrific, gender-based violence later on, which is followed by some strangers wondering if this mysterious Johnny Truant ever got the love he deserves UWU
Gag.
In short, House of Leaves could have been a perfectly fine story about a strange house and the impact it has the relationship between the couple the documentary follows/is made by, which is the only effective throughline in the book for me. Unfortunately, the author or someone in his circle must have thought that wouldn’t be good enough, so he instead became the thing the first few pages try to satirize: a boring, pretentious attempt at making a mountain out of a molehill.
YMMV.
Graphic: Drug use, Mental illness, Sexual violence, Animal cruelty, Death, Alcohol, Misogyny, Addiction, Cursing, Suicide, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual content, Animal death, and Sexual assault
Moderate: Forced institutionalization, Panic attacks/disorders, and Rape
bi_n_sad's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Suicidal thoughts, Gun violence, Violence, Physical abuse, Forced institutionalization, Mental illness, Gore, Sexual content, and Drug use
Moderate: Death, Child abuse, Alcohol, and Suicide
Minor: Rape and Cancer
rgraham's review against another edition
Graphic: Rape, Panic attacks/disorders, Alcohol, Murder, Drug abuse, Sexual violence, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Addiction, Alcoholism, Sexual assault, Mental illness, Death, and Child death