How to read House of Leaves
I'm wondering how to read this book. I'm about 2 chapters in, and I've read all of these footnotes/references to other material at the bottom of the page. So far, they basically mean nothing to me, and I think it was implied during the introduction that some of the footnotes are real and some of them are fake? Do they reference other parts of the book? Am I supposed to be flipping somewhere else in the book every time a footnote refences something? Or should I be going outside of the book to hunt down the references to read those? Is it worth it to try that if some are fake and some are real? Is there a wrong way to read this book? Can those footnotes/references be ignored sometimes or most of the time? Am I overthinking this and I should just keep reading normally without thinking about the footnotes?
I read it all as I went. Read the main text, pause to read the footnote, pause again to read the footnote to the footnote. When there’s a reference to an addendum, I would flip there to read and repeat the above cycle.
Reading HoL is kind of a journey. There’s not “a right way” to read it; more that suddenly you’ll find yourself literally reading the text differently than you would another book or even the chapter before. You’ll know when to jump around or flipping the book upside down or navigating a labyrinth of text because you’ll naturally find yourself doing so.
I read HoL while traveling by train. Those near me on the first leg of the trip would say they sat next to a man reading a novel. Those near me on the last leg of the trip? They probably told their family they spent the trip keeping their distance from a terrified lunatic.
Edit:
I look forward to your follow up after having finished the book on what you think about this question.
Thank you! This answers what I was wondering perfectly!
Yep - I would like to know what @YellowPudding thinks of the entire book. Please do update us, and also... do try to tell us exactly what genre of book this is. I'd love to know different people's opinions of this book. One of kind experience in my opinion.
I'll update when I'm done. I'm a slow reader, and with age I've decided not to rush things if I'm going to truly enjoy them. You might be waiting a while, is all I'm saying :)
Just keep reading. The flipping back and forth, keeping multiple bookmarks, is the experience.
But I haven't been flipping back and forth yet. Am I supposed to be doing that yet? Or does that come with time?
Eventually you’ll run into references to the appendices, which is when the flipping back and forth will come in
Don’t worry too much about absorbing everything happening in the footnotes! It’s not a situation where they’re integral to understanding the story, and if you get to the end and find that you enjoyed the book (which I definitely did, it’s one of my all-time favorites), they’ll give you something to dive deeper into on future re-reads.
Navigating the potential anxiety that comes with all of the footnotes and appendices and references is actually part of the experience of House of Leaves so just do whatever feels right and keeps you moving forward.
I had no idea this book existed. I just looked it up on Wikipedia and it sounds interesting and mad to read. I'm tempted to read it too.
Based on what I've read, I'm assuming it's a lot better to read this book in paperback form and not e-book form? I'm assuming it's easier to flip back and forth and bookmark if it's an actual physical book.
I don't even think you can get it in e-book form, since it wouldn't translate well due to all the intentionally non-standard layout and formatting. E.g. Amazon only has it available on paperback or hardcover.
I read books exclusively on e-readers, but this book is straight up impossible to read/ a very bad experience. Go to your local library and get a copy of this book. I was obsessed with it - which rarely happens these days as I've become an older reader. Just generally one of the weirdest things I've experienced.
I also generally like footnotes becoming whole extended parts of the narrative. Pratchett did this, but I think Infinite Jest took it to a whole different level and House of Leaves is basically the endgame of footnote/appendix/preface etc. all becoming part of a gestalt narrative.
Also please make sure you
Yeah, scans exist, but you will be miserable trying to read it digitally. You genuinely need a paper version to be able to read the book.
There not a “wrong” way to read this book. You can save all the footnotes for the end of a chapter or pause the main narrative and read the footnote when you get to them. I did the latter, just got to a good stopping point on the page and used a few bookmarks to flip back and forth.
I wouldn’t skip them entirely but it’s okay to skim. There are some cool narrative things that happen as part of flipping back and forth between the main story and the footnotes.
In my experience, you read it as a young teen in the dark in your grandma's creepy old house until you get too scared and try to go to sleep instead. Joking aside, I think part of the fun of reading that book for me was jumping between going through the appendix and the "main story" as if I had found a big pile of documents and was trying to sort out what happened. I don't think I had any sort of systematized way of doing that, I'd just go to footnotes whenever it seemed interesting, or coming back to them later if it didn't seem necessary at the time.
CORE MEMORY UNLOCKED
Gods you just reminded me of when I was a teenager reading that book. We were travelling through Zimbabwe at the time, and I ended up sharing a room with a bunch of people. Somehow even in that room at night with people around me I was still freaked out.
Early on it makes sense to read the whole page, text and footnotes. As the footnotes get longer sometimes I’d read the whole chapter then go back and read all of the footnotes, but honestly as everyone else is saying, there is no wrong way to read it. But I don’t think there is a way to avoid flipping around eventually.
I will say that many of the references are made up, as you’ve guessed, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be looking at the appendixes and other material as they are mentioned. But you don’t have to look outside the book, unless you are really searching for Easter eggs, or just really want to immerse yourself in the narrative.
I put a hold on this book at the library when I saw this discussion last month and it just became available today.
I checked it out about an hour ago and flipped through it a bit when I got home.
The formatting is really something!
I don't know if I'll have much time to start reading it until this weekend, but I'm really looking forward to it.
Enjoy! You’re in for one heck of an experience. It’s like nothing else I’ve read before or since, owing in big part to the bizarre layouts and printing. It’s not just there to be weird either, as you’ll realize that much of the weird formatting actually reflects events happening in the book.
If you really want to go down a rabbit hole, the writer’s sister, Poe, released an album called Haunted which also references characters and events in the book and just so happens to be a fantastic record in its own right
HoL is actually my favorite book. The story is slightly different depending on how you read it, but it really doesn't matter too much. I started out trying to just read it straight, but eventually had like 4 bookmarks going. Point being, just start and decide how you want to read it as you go along.
One of my favorite books. I've met MZD. Wonderful writer.
While I enjoyed House of Leaves. I much preferred Only Revolutions. The concept is a bit easier to understand. Read 8 or so pages. Flip the book over and read the “last” 8 or so pages. Repeat
The process of reading Only Revolutions was certainly easier to understand, but following the narrative itself? Not so much. A lot of the time it felt more like reading song lyrics than a novel. Which I guess is kind of the point, but that style didn't really gel for me. I'm not really a poetry guy anyway. It's of course extremely subjective.
I can see the parallels to poetry but I think I must have interpreted the nuances differently. I took the chances of place, time, vehicle ect as simply irrelevant information (it’s been a while since I’ve read this) and took it as, here is a story, the details are meaningless.
Sort of like taking the basis of a story and throwing just anything at the template. Much like a superhero movie where the powers, city, ect all fit the same formula of good guy beats bad guy
The key thing to remember with the footnotes is that they are from multiple sources or “narrators”.
The main narrator, Johnny Truant, is always in Times New Roman - read these
The editors - sort of important
References to movies/books/magazine articles, etc. - not as important for a first read through but interesting if you fall in love with the book. For example, there is a scene towards the end that is historical terror and claims to be from a book called “A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia (1588)” so I got the book and it isn’t in there. On the other hand, there are several chilling references to John Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” that all check out. I got a copy of that book and it’s an incredibly good read and now one of my favorites.