Mine is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.
It appears to be the creepiest book in the world, according to everyone who has read it. I’ve not heard or seen any other view to the contrary.
The length of it doesn’t help but I would be fine with it if it didn’t scare the Christmas out of people.
I’m not going anywhere near it.
Do you have that same feeling about any particular book? What is it and why?
Thanks.
by TroubleInElectricBlu
14 Comments
House of Leaves is not so much scary as disorienting. It keeps you off balance and there are times when you don’t know what the Christmas is going on.
I like the idea of Thomas Pynchon, but I just don’t make it through his books, specifically V and Gravity’s Rainbow.
House of Leaves is so good. It reads quickly, to be honest. At least it did for me.
that’s funny, I actually just finally bought House of Leaves to read.
Had a Barnes and Noble gift card from 2009, figured I better use it.
I usually do all e-books, but that is not available in that format, so bit the bullet and bought a physical copy.
Atlas Shrugged. I wanna know why it’s so hated but I’m not gonna commit to a book that long that has so many bad reviews
Any other books by Dostoevsky. I read Brothers Karamazov on Reddit’s recommendation and hated it. BTW, House of Leaves isn’t hard or too scary to read. It’s just odd and the unknown, unseen is what makes it creepy (kind of like what made Blair Witch Project creepy).
I’m looking at a copy of Infinite Jest on my bookshelf where it sits, and sits…
Les Miserables. I’ve heard people rave about it for years, but then I tried to read the Hunchback of Notre Dame and I damn near died of boredom. And that book is thin compared to Les Mis!
I’ll probably get down voted for it, but I just couldn’t stand it. Entire chapters devoted to the shape of doorways. Page after page about building shapes. I don’t need constant action, but I’d love it if SOMETHING happened.
Lolita.
I don’t think I could stomach the content.
You should give House of Leaves a read. I won’t read it again, but I’m glad I did read it. It’s creepy. It’s disorienting. It’s also fantastic. And anyone who enjoys reading should do it at least once.
Perfume.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I just know my heart couldn’t take it 🥺
Infinite Jest
A little life by Hanya Yanagihara : 700+ pages, and every reviews I’ve seen were from people crying their heart out at every single chapter
John Toland’s The Last 100 Days. One of my professors in graduate school told us all to read it because it’s his favorite popular history book, and the first of my friends who tried warned me that it gets into extreme detail about what the Red Army did to women as they crossed Europe. Like, incredibly graphic detail about individual people. She said she had nightmares and I have never read it. I know enough about what happened to know that I don’t want to know any more.