I have started and stopped reading house of leaves twice now. I am around page 200. I enjoy the main story about the house, but the narrator's long tangents take me out of it. Sometimes his messages take a while to read and thry almost always go "I went somewhere to talk to someone, then I had sex with her, then something weird started happening and just before it got me it stopped".
Along with that, there are writings in little boxes that seem like lists of things or descriptions of things but I don't know what they are referring to and feel like I wasted a bunch of time reading them.
Then there are all of the bibliography references and credits to books and stories that don't actually exist.
I get that this is a lot of what people consider unique about this story, but is it necessary to read? If I were to skip reading every last detail and just stick to the main story would I be missing out on something worth while?
by lilb1190
1 Comment
House of Leaves is not a book you read for the plot, just to find out how it ends. It’s all about the full experience of physically moving the book around in your hands, feeling the disorientation caused by the text, digging into the obscure footnotes. If you aren’t enjoying all of that, I personally don’t think you should continue with it just for the purpose of “finishing”. If you skip parts of it, what’s the point, you didn’t actually get the experience of reading and interacting with the book. Some books aren’t for you; that’s ok.