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It's definitely not your everyday novel and that is probably for the best. Reading through House of Leaves feels like a "project" rather than a leisure experience, it's something that you commit to. Having finished the book a few hours ago, I still can't decide if it is really worth the commitment, but it was certainly an experience. By mixing different narrative layers and perspectives, it sort of also blurs the line between the reader and the book. The act of reading HoL sort of becomes an active part of the experience. I think it's probably fair to ask if HoL is even a novel and I can't quite answer that.

It's definitely not your everyday novel and that is probably for the best. Reading through House of Leaves feels like a "project" rather than a leisure experience, it's something that you commit to. Having finished the book a few hours ago, I still can't decide if it is really worth the commitment, but it was certainly an experience. By mixing different narrative layers and perspectives, it sort of also blurs the line between the reader and the book. The act of reading HoL sort of becomes an active part of the experience. I think it's probably fair to ask if HoL is even a novel and I can't quite answer that.

Quite the odysee this book, but man do I not have the slightest clue how I feel about it. It is somehow amazing and awful at the same time, pretentious and honest.

You can't just keep grinding on language apps forever, so once I am done with House of Leaves, I will finally dig my teeth into this beginner's Esperanto book.

From the little bits of information I got from my brother, this will either be a pointless, pretentious nightmare or an earth shattering masterpiece. Really looking forward to it.

From what I gathered from this, Shirley Jackson is very much focussed on the perceived "normal" and it's concequences, often highlighting the oddity of social rules once they are challenged. The stories are a bit hit or miss for me, probably based on what I can relate to and what I can't. At the same time, the mundane nature of most of the stories did in places feel quite dull to me. As a collection of stories this work quite effectively creates a sense of hightend uneasyness, almost anxiety. With every new story I found myself more and more wary of the worlds they are set in. In that regard, having The Lottery be the final story of the whole is quite genius, spelling out directly what the other stories generally only hint at.

At the end I am torn, I don't know if I am bored or fascinated.

Reading this book is an amazing, unique experience. The way the story unfolds or rather allows itself to unfold in your head before throwing a curveball that makes you question everything you thought you understood so far is insane. Literally every few pages I found myself putting the book down, shaking my head in exhilarated confusion, trying to piece together what might be going on in the last house on needless street.

The pages just fly by when reading this book. The writing style is superb. It's clever, witty and well-paced. Just enough surprises in wording, comparisons and structure to make this a real page turner without getting exhausting. That said, I am just not a fantasy fan and probably never will be. The story didn't particularly grab me and while the world is clearly well thought out, I couldn't care less about in which part of what continent university x was located before it was moved by ruler z to its new location in city y. That's just me though.