A review by ninett
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Did not finish book. Stopped at 25%.

I found this book immensely boring, overambitious and contrived. It took considerable willpower to get to the 25% mark in it, and when even then it did not begin fulfilling on its page-turner promise I finally gave up on it. I felt that the author came up with an interesting idea about a physically impossible house and a separate idea about wacky formatting, and then just jammed the two ideas together, with a sprinkle of dry technical datasheet style documentation about both interspersed throughout. Yes, I understand that the formatting is meant to give us the same experience as the inhabitants of the house had, but it was so gimmicky and made it all a colossal hassle. He didn't even attempt to write well, thinking that the formatting will more than make up for it.