After redditors recommended this one to me dozens of times I finally decided to reserve it at the library. HoL stinks.
I did not enjoy this book. I understand the story in a story structure but didn’t care for it. I didn’t like the unreliable narrator. I did however like the mystery of the house. Sometimes in life you find a piece of media “too early” to appreciate or enjoy, but I don’t think this is one of those times. I have no plans to revisit or try again. Also it wasn’t even scary.
Maybe someone smarter than me can explain how I missed details or just didn’t get it. Simply couldn’t find enjoyment from this one. That is all. Goodbye.
by slimeyellow
40 Comments
You’re allowed to not like popular books because they didn’t speak to you, not a very controversial opinion at all. I enjoy LOTR but it’s always irked me whenever I consider that Sauron is really nothing more than the middle management of bad guys in the universe.
I guess it wasn’t for you.
It has so many elements I normally enjoy in a horror novel, but while I love the characterization of the house, I could not give a hoot about Johnny Truant or any of the actual characters. They were painfully boring. The gimmick of being able to “travel” through the book only emphasized this. The one character of interest was his mother, whose absence was palpable.
I did learn that the author is the brother of the singer Poe, and her song ~~Haunted~~ Hey Pretty has him reading an excerpt.
Edit: I DNF’d in the middle of >!The chase scene in the inner void when all the characters were running.!< I realized I didn’t care what happened. Still read the appendix that was 1/2 the book.
I think the most interesting thing is the text layout and formatting. I enjoyed it when I read it at 19, but as far as postmodern literature goes, it’s not great. I’m still very glad it exists, and I think it’s a pretty good introduction to experimental literature.
Hey, not all books appeal to everyone, and that’s completely fine. I adore HoL, but I completely understand why others don’t.
I found the inane/unhinged/babbling academic writing extremely fun. I also adore ergodic books. If you asked me to explain why, I honestly couldn’t tell you.
It sticks in my brain. I also read it during COVID, and something about the weird layers of it let me get lost in the bizarre world of the book during lockdowns, which was amazing.
The concept of the labyrinth, Johnny’s descent into madness, and the stories within the story are all absolutely fascinating to me.
I can appreciate how disorienting it was. I thought it was creative. Overall I didn’t like the stories.
I got this book out of the library on the recommendation of a friend. I liked the concept, but I quickly realized I don’t have the time for 700 pages of self-absorbed, metafictional literary masturbation.
It was a 7/10 story with a gimmick honestly. “I’ve never felt such ***terror*** from an empty page!” People get so hyperbolic about this book for some reason.
I also liked the mystery of the house itself, and personally love unreliable narrators, but I found it just too pretentious. Which is really a high bar for me, actually. (Ex: Eco is “medium-high pretentious,” but I like him so it’s ok.)
I also love mythology, dark urban fantasy grit, weird tales, typography games, etc. Even like footnotes. Seemed like it should be a slam dunk for me, but meh.
Edit: added another thing I shoulda liked
People say it’s the story of a mans descent into madness.
I say it’s the story of a guy who meets random women who instantly want to have kinky sex with him, some loser they just met.
After the like 4th time in a row that happened I literally tossed it into my donate pile.
I like the setup with the house but the book relies way too heavily on gimmicks and I didn’t like Jonathan as a character or buy his descent into madness at all.
I recall enjoying it while I was reading it, even as the formatting gave my eReader fits, but felt entirely let down by the ending. Sitting here now I can’t even recall how exactly it ended, but my feeling is that it just kind of petered out with no payoff.
ugh yeah, fuckin hated it.
Haha I’m definitely a member of this club. It is basically “Gimmick: The Book!”
Did I think the unique typesettings were interesting? Sure.
Was I intrigued by the mystery of the house? Definitely.
But there is little to no pay off. And after awhile. the gimmick gets old.
I didn’t hate the Johnny Truant parts like some people do, but the book is overall a big “meh” and incredibly overrated in my opinion.
https://thehardtimes.net/blog/opinion-house-of-leaves-is-just-infinite-jest-for-spooky-people/
I have ADHD and this book seems like a nightmare. I’d heard others rave about it so I picked up a copy at the bookstore just to flip through it and oh, absolutely not. I will freely admit I’m not clever enough to ever get through that book.
I am currently enjoying it greatly, but yea, I could do with less johnny and more house. I did enjoy a self awareness in the formatting and multiple narratives creating a cereberal labyrinth to parallel the house. Ironically especially the weird formatting requiring backtracking, and chooseing paths. The incessent footnoting feels like looking down dead ends in a maze to me. I’m not done yet, and not sure how the extensive appendices factor in. I might change my mind.
But I was introduced by way of myhouse.wad videos, and loved the choose your own adventure books.
To paraphrase, you’re allowed to not like anything you like.
At the very heart of it, the story just sucks and nothing is very fleshed out. Everything is just a distraction
Time once again to link to [Burning Down the House of Leaves](https://imgur.com/gallery/burning-down-house-of-leaves-ho1AkHS), which is ideal for House of Leaves haters, and not so bad for everyone else too. Perhaps I may entice you by noting that’s [Weird Al’s “Hardware Store”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUAlOKMo_94) excerpted in the middle? It will only take a few minutes of your time. (Tragically the original website is long obliterated.)
I stumbled upon a copy of The Fifty Year Sword a while ago and while I thought it had an interesting aesthetic, I didn’t really get it at all. (It didn’t help that the back cover blurb was wildly misleading.) House of Leaves was considerably more substantial, at least.
ETA: And https://xkcd.com/472/ , of course. (I think that’s how I first learned of the book.)
All form no function.
I am not in the haters club. I am in the “I tried three times in the last few years and every time i can’t pass 25% of it” club.
It’s just not for me. If you are in this club check out We used to live here by Marcus Kliewer.
For a long time this was my favourite book. For what it’s worth, my bias may be that I’m a psychologist. So I was deeply impressed with the philosophical and psychological elements that starts with slight unmet expectations of physics and the cognitive dissonance that obsessive exploration that comes from that. I also enjoy how it demonstrates the ease in which anyone could slip into a psychotic break under the right conditions.
I also hated Johnny Truant. I was there for the mystery of the house. I wish there had been more to that part of it and less of everything else.
The academic satire was mildly amusing sometimes but there was too much of it too. As someone who went to grad school twice I can appreciate how self-important academia can be.
I just posted about this book in another thread. I wanted to like it, and really pushed myself to try to finish it. It has portions of it that had me interested, but you had to slog through so much abstract BS to get to those parts.
Finally said enough was enough and quit it.
My unpopular take on it is that I truly believe *A Series of Unfortunate Events* did the whole “play with the formatting, layout, etc. to entice the reader” (ergodic literature) better than HoL. In the sense that it’s used more sparingly and to greater effect. When the orphans fall down a pitch black elevator shaft in Book 6 you get two pages just covered in black ink, and it works just as well if not better than everything HoL threw at the wall.
roof gaze modern oatmeal whistle plough act crown recognise cover
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev/home)*
I really like house of leaves, but by the halfway point I was skipping Johnny’s sections over entirely. I dont even think I missed anything at that point, he felt like a rambling side tangent half the time and I couldnt stand him.
Oh you mean “infinite jest” for people whose favorite movie is Donnie Darko?
I hated it so much and the hate grows every single time I see it recommended. Especially when it’s recommended and barely meets the criteria that the OP is asking about.
Imo it is pretentious without substance. Pretentiousness is fine if it’s earned and it is not in House of Leaves.The formatting was an interesting idea, as well as the story within a story. But that’s it. It falls flat.
This Seinfeld quote sums it up:
“Perhaps there’s more to [HOL] than meets the eye” “no, there’s less”
Too many footnotes that break up the story. Also,I don’t want to have to turn a huge book upside down every few pages to read a couple sentences.
I appreciate the amount of work the author put into it and I really liked the metaphor, but overall I hated it!!! I forced myself to finish it which was a form of torture. I really don’t understand why so many people say this book scares them.
I made it about 20 pages into it before I decided it was definitely not for me and gave it to my room mate, who did like it. Maybe I’d have liked it when I was younger but as I age I find I have much less patience for books that try to be “clever” like it does. The actual writing just wasn’t strong enough to make me overcome that.
I had similar takeaways. I didn’t understand the hype.
Nah, I hard agree. It’s a victim of its own hype, and once you get accustomed to the typographical weirdness and the weird layout, it just becomes a very creepypasta-esque horror interspersed with meandering, crass sex. And I’m not a pride – but Johnny Truant is never fleshed out enough to make his deranged journey into sex and drugs interesting. It’s also repetitive and repetitive. From about a hundred pages in, it just becomes:
1) Weirdly laid out page with disjointed text and copious lists
2) multiple-page-long description of Johnny having sexy sex with a sexy woman who reminded him of the time he had sex with a sexy woman while having sex
3) The House
4) Two paragraphs of mediocre horror writing
Rinse and repeat.
I passionately hated this book. A serious waste of my time and life to read it. If you are going to be a crappy book, at least be a short crappy book. I read the whole damn thing and not an aspect of it was satisfying.
This book gave me permanent trust issues when it comes to Reddit recommendations
It’s been a while since I’ve read it but I completely agree. I thought the formatting was interesting but to me it felt a little too gimmicky.
I love footnotes and interesting styles, but to me this book read as if the story served the formatting rather than the formatting serving the story if that makes sense. I couldn’t help but feel as if the idea to make the pages do all those interesting things came first and the story was built around it.
100% this. I struggled SO hard to make it through this book. At the time, it was just a book a friend recommended, then a few years later I started seeing it pop up on more and more “must read” lists and was … baffled. It was okay at best. If it didn’t have the conceit of the narratives within narratives and the weird typography, I don’t think anyone would even remember it. I barely remember it as it is.
Ugh, I found this book extraordinarily tedious. I liked the idea of it far more than the experience of actually trying to force my way through it. I will never understand the rave reviews it garners.
I felt House of Leaves was boring, pretentious and had a fairly formulaic ending.
The long discourses on philosophy made me feel like the author wanted me to know how smart he is.
I did pick it up expecting a horror book so maybe my expectations being so far off is why I didn’t like it.
It wasn’t the least bit scary. The structure was over complicated. I reluctantly finished and felt like there was no pay off to it.