I have my mom’s copy of house of leaves, she died 2 years ago 💔 she was my favorite person on earth and I miss her so much

and I really want to get past the first 100 pages, but finding it hard to

she was an avid reader of difficult texts and books, and said it was one of her favorite fiction books, so for that reason I have been searching Reddit to get some perspective on how to get into it

I’m finding it difficult to get into , have tried multiple times but I am committed to reading the whole thing as a tribute to my mom

I know that may sound odd to some, but I want that connection 🩵 somehow

any advice on how to approach it ?

  • ItsBoughtnotBroughtBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    The first half or so of House of Leaves has a deliberately dense typography (not sure if that’s the right word). The font is smaller, set closer together and there are a lot more words per page. So it feels like it is taking a long time to read because you’re not clocking as many pages. Keep that in mind when you feel like it’s a slog.

    I wouldn’t skip parts, especially in your case, because the parts you’d be skipping are the ‘difficult’ ones and you said your mom not only enjoyed difficult reads but it’s her favourite book, so read the whole thing. I’m not a fan of skipping parts in general because the whole has been put together by the author for a reason and the different parts interact with each other.

    In my copy of the book, the footnotes are in the text, not all grouped together at the end, which is how they should be.