Navidson* haha.

I’m only on page 80 of this novel and I feel so uncomfortable and my nerves are completely shot. I don’t want to be in the dark or alone haha. I detest the rambling that goes on in this, the lists and such, but it’s such a good book I just can’t put it down! Hopefully I don’t become the next Johnny ;)

I am currently 1/3 of the way through the “body” of the novel. At first I found it dry but at my current location, it’s enthralling. I went on a detour and read Johnny’s mother’s letters to him from the institution. It’s fascinating to say the least but I had an especially good time reading the one letter where the real message was in only reading the first letter of each word.

I wonder, is Johnny’s paranoia and hallucinations all due to the way he engrossed himself into Zampano’s text? Or is it also a manifestation of a partially genetic disorder passed onto him by his mother which was triggered by the stress of reading such a stimulating manuscript.

[…] bought Danielewski’s new book because I loved House of Leaves. It was a weird, scary and visually interesting novel. It’s unique presentation and original […]

[…] I say brief description, I mean brief. You don’t need to do a House of Leaves type transcript of every scene and every dialog. Just give your readers some idea of what happens […]

Man, I envy you.

I get creeped out easily. Even that Creepypasta link creeped me out. And I’m reading that during lunch with colleagues around in my cubicle in a brightly lit office.

It’s fairly easy to creep me out. The last horror movie I watched was Event Horizon, and that was in the middle of the night in an empty house. I had to stop after a while and turn on the lights ;) I love that feeling though, so I’ll definitely add this to the ever-growing list of books I should read. Which means I may or may not ever read it, since I don’t read books very often :P

@Luke Maciak: Most movies also have a little to no effect. Horrors seems mostly to be splatter and sudden apparance of the monster. At most, they startle or shock. Yet I am hardned by years of gaming and movies, so I can shrug them off :P

No, the real problem are the horror stories who doesn’t use gore or sudden apparances. It is those who builds a mood, messes with your mind and who don’t give away the big secret or reason until late. I can’t take those, since I am bound to imagine what that secret is and it horrible to my psychological nerve. And I do realise that is precisly does horror stories that is the most appealing, for precisly that.

In fact, my imagination can get so bad, that I still need to have a lamp nearby to calm me down :(. But I was man enough to see BioShock through :D

I remain largely unaffected by this sort of stuff. It’s actually incredibly hard to creep me out. Movies especially – they don’t do anything for me. I can watch most horror movies alone at midnight in a dark room, and I’ll be fine. Written stories sometime do succeed in making me feeling uneasy – but I usually don’t dwell on these things and I can shake it off easily.

Oh, and I sleep like a baby – but that’s probably usually due to exhaustion – I do stay up late most of the time.

Definetly a book I won’t be reading any time soon. I cherish my sleep and a vivid imagination, combined with unsetteling stories, tends to make it hard for Mr. Sandman to visit me. And an excellent memory on my part certainly makes even the smallest scary tidbit stay with me for a long time.

The worst part of it all is how horror and unsettling, mind bending stories has perhaps the most compelling plots. I want to continue, I want to freaking know how they end, perhaps because I don’t want to fantazise how it ends.

So while you make a great case for this book and it certainly seems very interresting, I am person who simply can’t allow myself to read them. A sad thing really.