hi, kids !

so this is exciting! thank you for the invitation. i do so very much enjoy arguing about books.

so; to start, and to clarify:

house of leaves is my favourite book (and i say this with very little hesitation) because it fits all of the criteria that i have for enjoyment of a book (i should say 'artform' when it applies to this particular novel).

1) the subject should be interesting. a matter of subjective interpretation, sure, but i think we can all agree that if a book is about something that's been discussed ad nauseam, that no one is going to want to read more of it. although i guess that can be challenged by saying "what about reinvention, what about that one book that says it better than all the others?" so maybe that doesn't apply. i have to be encouraged, i guess i should say, to delve into the book. this encouragement comes from many things -

a - a visually interesting cover. i'm a geek. i have two copies of some books because i thought the revised cover was so much more evocative of the story.

b - the style of the writing on the first page: the "hook." usually this can be assessed by both the phrasing of the sentence & by the words used. sometimes i'll read the last page. i know, it's a sin. i'm trying to get myself out of it.

c - i guess these are more criteria i look for when i pick up a book at random from the bookstore, or the library. although one is different from the other - choosing a book to BUY as opposed to BORROWING one holds different importance & value. enough of that.

2) the style has to be original. i'm tired of reading the same sort of thing. i am interested in writers who show me, via their craft, that their brain works a little bit differently, who think in a new way, who aren't afraid to challenge the common notion of pulp.

3) it can't have ever been in oprah's book club. ... and i'm not sure if i'm kidding on this one or not.

house of leaves is such an interesting book to me because it is, essentially, a puzzle. i picked it up from the shelf at random years back, maybe, gosh, 5 years ago?, and was intrigued by the design on the spine of the book: photographs of houses. i noted the "of leaves" reference & i think drew a walt whitman parallel. i looked at the cover, found the 'labyrinth' design appealing, and then opened it to read the jacket. flipping through the pages had me encountering the bizarre pieces of danielewski's formidable novel, and the clincher was encountering, at the end of the book, an index. confused, i flipped back to the cover, where it clearly said: A NOVEL below the title. that's what did it for me. the index in a novel. that, and finding a random staff of music in pages of pages of blank space, somewhere within the book.

it's a puzzle is why i like it. i like things i can work at, things which get more solveable. i like using intellect & analysis to get at what things are doing. i like it even more when the book eludes me & triumphantly shows me what the truth was all along. i like it even more, i discovered, when the truth is never revealed, or is too deeply hidden, but i still find the narrative enjoyable.

danielewski brings something new to the visual structure of the novel: he transforms it, and perhaps caters to the ADD generation, but it complements both his style of writing & the content of his narrative. i've heard it, the typographical presentation that is, dismissed as 'gimmickry,' but i call bullshit on that claim because, technically, although it is pejoratively viewed, a gimmick is a 'an ingenious or novel device, scheme, or stratagem, esp. one designed to attract attention or increase appeal.' according to the dictionary. i don't think the typography is to attract attention. it's not jumping up & down for you to see it. danielewski could give a shit. it's there to enhance the reading experience, not try to ruin it. and i think it's lovely. it's confusing, it's immersive, it's incredibly conducive to re-reading ... i can't see a reason not to like it.

secondly, the structure is so complex and mysterious it's like reading three agatha christie novels in one setting, where everyone knows everyone and someone is the bad guy but no one knows who it is. layers of reality, stories within stories, another favourite of mine: meta-fiction (c.f. italo calvino's if on a winter's night a traveler) - and this does it quite well.

i'm sorry, i felt the need to explain myself because i've met so many people who count that book as their favourite, or one of their favourites, and they turn out to be pretentious little dimwits who've never even completed it or understood one-fourth the mythological references, or even really enjoyed it and just say they did because it's "cool."

i am not one of those.

SECONDLY -

life of pi.

there is one thing, and one thing only, that i loved about this book, and it was the fact that you will never know whether the story told is true or not. i love the 'torment' aspect of it, as you called it, mr. ball -

the only problem is have with the book is that the story told is boring. who cares if it's true or not? it was like watching a saturday morning cartoon trying to introduce one to the concept of theology. no thanks. i like my philosophy to be upfront with me. if there's words i don't know, i'll look them up. it's called learning. yann, your book doesn't do that - it suits up your parable in a nice little allegory tuxedo and marches it around. too bad that it had such an interesting conclusion. this is one of those books, like ishmael, and the celestine prophecy, that i just want to mash up into paste & feed back into the sapholes of the trees that suffered to make that dreck available to the public at large.

cheers!