Reading House of Leaves for the First Time | Deep Dive Vlog with Spoilers
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 พ.ย. 2024
- Wow, this was an undertaking! Much more than I anticipated, but a rewarding one. I read House of Leaves for the first time and this reading vlog with spoilers documents my experience. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
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Angry Johnny (1995) by Poe music video: • POE - ANGRY JOHNNY (Mu...
Dear Johnny (2000) by Poe: • Poe - Dear Johnny
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I have never NOT wanted to read a book so much in my life.... LMAO
Haha!!! I think a lot of people will see this and feel strongly one way or another.
I am about 240 pages into this book and I loved hearing your takes on the journey up to that point, I haven’t taken notes or even put tabs into the book but I really don’t find it difficult to understand. I’m not sure why people find this book so intimidating, it’s 100% worth reading it’s so damn intriguing. Will finish the video once I finish the book.
Seriously the discourse around this book is so confusing. It's a pretty basic story lmao
Love your obsession. Echos apply all over the book. Johnny’s story often echos what is happening in the Navison story. It’s also a scary foreshadowing of the coin and the spiral staircase, which just blew my mind.
This made me less interested in picking up the book :D thank you for filming your journey!, I can now finally put this book out of my head. I was pretty sure, it wouldn’t be for me, but I always wondered.
I'm glad it was helpful! In my mind this video was intended to do a couple of things: give people who think they aren't interested in reading it a feel for what it's really like, and do a deep dive that might be interesting for people who've already read it.
Finally someone has logged their journey with this infamous book. I don’t mind the spoilers and would still read it IF someone I trust gets on well with it
I hope it's helpful!
Navidson breaking a hip reminded me of Jacob wrestling the angel and losing an eye like having the "plank removed from his own eye." That said - thank you for reading this for me because I will never pick it up. :)
Interesting!! I hadn't thought of that.
I love how everyone who reads this (including me) instantly says "well now its time to dive into theories" after reading the end. :)
Haha! Yep, I don't know how you can escape that.
Just finished this book today. I dug a little and kept notes in a notebook as I read. I didn't deep dive as much as you did, but I did make a lot of connections as I was reading. It doesn't bother me that the end is so open. I like that every reader can make their own interpretation and almost no theories, even really wild ones, are totally unsupported somehow. I am still settling on how I interpret what was real or if any of it was real. It was a very interactive reading experience.
I couldn’t do it so bless you! I did S by JJ Abrams and I will never do one of these books again. It was just too much! Lol
It's not for everyone!
Danielewski got you to be just as obsessed with the details and meaning as Johnny, Zampano, Navidson, and Pelafina were.
Thank you for this video!!! I just finished reading House of Leaves and used your video almost as a reading companion. This book is many things (including a love story, in my opinion!) but I would never check the scary box.
I love that! And yeah, it's a wild ride but not particularly scary.
It makes me very happy to see you so involved and engaged, do research, make theories, etc. Watching this finalizes my not wanting to read this book, because I know I will not put this much effort into reading a book. Thank you for sharing! I loved the whole spoilery vlog 😆
I'm glad you liked it! Yeah, I think this is a book that will appeal to a certain kind of reader and I hope this helps people figure that out.
This was fascinating! I haven't read the book and I'm not planning on it (much less now that I know you end up with no answers whatsoever lol) but it was very interesting to see you go into such a deep dive, and to finally have some idea of what the book is about. It did look like a huge amount of work, so congrats on the accomplishment!
Thanks! I'm glad I did it and documented the experience. It's one of those things that either will or won't appeal to you.
What I always tell people about this book is that you will only get out of it what you put into it. I agree it is pretentious, but if you’re in the right mood for it, there’s a lot to get out of the book. Layer upon layer of symbolism and metaphors. I found only one scene to be scary, but that wasn’t the point for me. If someone is just looking for a really scary story to read, this isn’t the one I would recommend. I had a very similar experience of feeling like I was in the labyrinth while in the middle of this book. It’s very effective in that way.
Yes! I think it does a good job of getting in your head if you really dive into the experience.
I watched this whole video after reading the book. Wow... your findings are really different from anything that I found. Actually I'm not sure if I found any of the references in the book by myself (english is not my native language)I just felt the whole experience as really therapeutic. I have kind of similar traumas that johnny has had (the main issue is about my parents etc) and could find a resolution to my own terrors.
here we go !!!
You have convinced me to enter the maze ;)
Success!! Haha! I hope you enjoy it.
Brave & diligent 💮🍁🍂🍃
The beginning of this video scared the crap out of me!!!
I’m very impressed how much effort you put into reading this book. I’ve always enjoyed your thoughts on any book really, so I was very curious what you thought about that particular one. I read it last year and had a lot of conflicting feelings about it. I also enjoy puzzles and trying to find pieces and hidden Easter Eggs that connect and further the story in interesting ways. Reading House of Leaves definitely had interesting moments, but lot of the time I felt bored and even frustrated. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I felt like the author just crammed in as many random references as he possibly could to try to make things more interesting, or to show his scope of knowledge, but these references actually didn’t have any meaningful context or further the story in any way, and it left me wondering “what was the point?” I kept waiting for things to make sense or connect, and for me it never really happened. I wish the story itself, without all the gimmicks, was more interesting and scary as well, but it was a little “meh” for me. Although, I have no doubt that the author probably put a hell of a lot of time and effort into writing this book, and that itself is sort of mind blowing.
I really enjoyed this video though, so thank you for that.
P.S. Having said all that, I feel like I might actually want to read this book again one day and see if I feel differently. Go figure.
Haha! I've been having fun playing with intros lately. I'm glad you liked the video! This was a very interesting experience and yeah, I don't think you're wrong about some of the randomness. And I'm with you, as mixed as this experience was I could see revisiting the story in a couple of years.
Just wondering if you've gone and watched the videos on the Pelican Black youtube channel? They're video diaries of Johnny putting together House of Leaves that were released in 2017. Also Poe's album Haunted is meant to be a soundtrack to House of Leaves.
I have not but now I'm going to go track it down!!! I love all the meta elements.
Poe's album Haunted (which Dear Johnny appears on) is absolutely a counterpart to House of Leaves. One remix of a track on the album, Hey Pretty, has Mark reading an excerpt from House of Leaves. I found House of Leaves through Haunted, which apparently is the opposite of most people who have read House of Leaves.
Both Haunted and House of Leaves exist because of the siblings working through the death of their father. Knowing that really helped me contextualize a LOT of the story, especially Johnny Truant's narrative and the whole labyrinth idea. The underlying themes of grief really stand out with that meta-context.
That's so interesting! I'm going to have to check out the entire album. And yes, I can see how grief would make sense.
This might be irrelevant, but one thing that struck me is the mention of The Happiest Place on Earth with Thumper. Bambi is a common stripper name in movies and such. So maybe we can connect Thumper back to the deer imagery somehow. The relationship between parent and child is a prominent theme in the Disney movie, a motif which is obviously a big hang up for Johnny. Similarly, Bambi falls in love with a doe when he's young, and tries to get up the courage to pursue her when he comes of age. That reminded me of Holloway's Elizabeth story, and the deer necklace. Could Thumper be Elizabeth? Could Elizabeth be connected to Daisy somehow? I'm probably reaching and way off, but it's fun to theorize! Anyway, this vlog was a blast!
Yes!! After re-watching the vlog some of this struck me as well. It's so interesting and this is what makes me kind of want to revisit the book in a couple of years. I do think there's a connection to all of the deer imagery. Glad you enjoyed the video!
This was a fun video. Honestly as you were talking about who really was Zampano, I thought it was Johnny's mother. Is this a book that you are interested in rereading in a couple of years? I'm curious if that would change your reading experience.
Interesting theory! And yeah, I do think I would revisit this in a couple of years.
I remember everyone was reading this book when I was in college, but it always seemed like too much work to me. And I’m not a huge horror fan.
When you got to the morse code … I was like, “Yeah, I don’t want to work that hard.” I can enjoy dense, involved, reference-heavy texts, but not 700 pages, and not about movie-making, photography, and old houses.
Haha! Yeah, I definitely think this isn't the book for everyone.
I've never heard of this book but I enjoyed your vlog. I dont think that it'll be one for me but I loved your thoughts.
It's definitely not going to be the book for everyone!
I feel like I really want to read it now, having a head start with the research. 😊 I'm wondering if Johnny is the Minotaur, the damaged son, and the book is the maze, the labyrinth, constructed by his father, Zampano, to restrain him. Hmm. The complete chaos it creates of space and time could be totally disorienting. Maybe that is its horror?
I'm interested to see what you think!
I tried to read this book for Lala’s book club earlier in the year and DNFed at page 40 or so. It was interesting to watch your journey but I have no regrets leaving this book.
Yeah, people seem to be commenting either they are more interested or less interested after seeing this. It's not going to be fun for everyone!
Seeing everyone read this right now makes me wanna reread it. I read it in one night about seven years ago and it feels like a fever dream at this point hahaha.
I can't imagine reading it all in one night!
I DNFed this book (with anger and in fact I then donated it because I didn’t want to look at it anymore) but after your review I see what I missed out on and now wish I had read differently
I have not read it, so I skipped to the final thoughts. I have ordered it for my library though and I am interesting in trying it out.
Hope you enjoy it!
I want to know how this book was sold to a publishing house and what the manuscript looked like....it would have been a mess!
Yeah, the formatting is something else!
The cover is shorter just like the house is bigger than the outside.
Very excited to hear your thoughts on this
I'm not sure how relevant this is, especially 2 months after this video was published, but I was watching it back and I noticed something. Around the 41 minute mark, in Johnny's mother's final letter, she adresses the letter by saying "Dear John", as opposed to "Dear Johnny", as she had in her other letters. Dear John letters were typically written by a woman to her husband, or male romantic partner, typically when he was at war, to tell him that she was leaving him. My thought is that this letter is her Dear John letter, or her final letter, to Johnny, her son. It seems to me, having not read the book, that this is a simple easter egg, but I think it's interesting.
OMG!!! Yeah, I think you're probably right. this book is a trip.
I'd be more scared of you not leaving! Be gun with you
I don’t dare to read and watching this definitely I don’t want to read it. Way too much work and doesn’t seem pleasurable. My reading needs to be enjoyable.
Your intro is scarier than the book
Lol! Thank you.
This book was too pretentious for me, didn't like the tone of it, overall not worth the effort! But I enjoyed watching your experience with it!
That's fair! It's definitely not going to appeal to everyone.
Whalestoe is an anagram for “Who’s Tale”…
You should look up the word "pretentious" before calling a book that... Just sayin'.