Helpful Score: 3
This is a book that you will want to keep to study and cross reference. It is not a book that you will want to read and pass on. So dont feel bad if it gathers dust on your TBR shelf, cause it will need to go back when you finish it. But then again you never really finish it.
This book is a cult classic, and I am not the target audience. I think this is geared towards those who like to slice and dice and dig deep in to a layered piece of literature. There are discussion boards with questions and answers and essays about this book.
The aim of this review is to help you determine if you want to get in the Wishlist line to get a copy. No, I say click on the Amazon link and buy yourself a new copy. Many people I have ran into have told me that it took them 6 months, to read this book. Or that they have friends who have 3 copies to cross reference items and write in the margins notes. Gasp! Oh the horror, writing in book. See it is that kind of book.
Basically you are going to meet Johnny Truant, who writes the intro. Johnny got a weird book from an old man named Zampano. Zampano's book is about a family in a house in Virginia, Navidsons. The family in Virginia put up video cameras all over their house, and then the house started to grow. The house has long dark hallways that grew one day. You can get lost, and people do. This is a horror story.
So you are reading one story and then you will find pages of a footnotes with Johnny telling his story. and you just get lost in these footnote stories. Then at about page 76 or so it has to skip back and read all of Johnnys letters from his very mentally ill mother in an institution.
There are all kinds of footnotes about research on the Navidson family. Detailed esoteric crap about feelings and relationships that were dissected by the scholarly upper crust who dissect every sliver of the Navidsons taped lives. Pages with one word, pages written on braille, pages written backwards, pages in languages other than English, pages you have to decode. I love a challenge, and I love a good mystery and puzzle, but I really dont care about any of these people. Truant is a mentally ill, drug user who tells flamboyant stories on improve.
There is so much debate about how much of the whole story Truant create, if there was Zampano or even the Navidsons. I think the question is pointless. The whole book is a work of fiction, who cares who created the fiction with the fiction.
I have better things to do with my time. I am not the target audience. I guess I feel like the author is just playing games with all the clues and trickery and I just do not care. I wont spend more time pondering what parts were REAL and which parts were the fabrication of a sick mind.
This book is a better book for hipsters who have time to smoke a bowl and talk about their findings and clues. Or if they dont smoke, then I guess they could do shrooms, or even just drink some coffee. I just dont want to devote that much time to a book. It is a fictitious horror story that is multi layers and in the end doesnt reveal all the answers. The whole book is fiction. I didnt care about any of the characters. I dont even care about this book.
But that is ok cause this book doesnt care about me. I know, I know, all the cool kids are reading it. But I was never very cool. If you read it and feel bad cause you dont feel like you fit in with the cool kids, come join the rest of us who read books that actually have an ending. Some happy, some sad. We will save you a seat, and half caf, soy latte with a caramel drizzle and a muffin low fat of course.
This book is a cult classic, and I am not the target audience. I think this is geared towards those who like to slice and dice and dig deep in to a layered piece of literature. There are discussion boards with questions and answers and essays about this book.
The aim of this review is to help you determine if you want to get in the Wishlist line to get a copy. No, I say click on the Amazon link and buy yourself a new copy. Many people I have ran into have told me that it took them 6 months, to read this book. Or that they have friends who have 3 copies to cross reference items and write in the margins notes. Gasp! Oh the horror, writing in book. See it is that kind of book.
Basically you are going to meet Johnny Truant, who writes the intro. Johnny got a weird book from an old man named Zampano. Zampano's book is about a family in a house in Virginia, Navidsons. The family in Virginia put up video cameras all over their house, and then the house started to grow. The house has long dark hallways that grew one day. You can get lost, and people do. This is a horror story.
So you are reading one story and then you will find pages of a footnotes with Johnny telling his story. and you just get lost in these footnote stories. Then at about page 76 or so it has to skip back and read all of Johnnys letters from his very mentally ill mother in an institution.
There are all kinds of footnotes about research on the Navidson family. Detailed esoteric crap about feelings and relationships that were dissected by the scholarly upper crust who dissect every sliver of the Navidsons taped lives. Pages with one word, pages written on braille, pages written backwards, pages in languages other than English, pages you have to decode. I love a challenge, and I love a good mystery and puzzle, but I really dont care about any of these people. Truant is a mentally ill, drug user who tells flamboyant stories on improve.
There is so much debate about how much of the whole story Truant create, if there was Zampano or even the Navidsons. I think the question is pointless. The whole book is a work of fiction, who cares who created the fiction with the fiction.
I have better things to do with my time. I am not the target audience. I guess I feel like the author is just playing games with all the clues and trickery and I just do not care. I wont spend more time pondering what parts were REAL and which parts were the fabrication of a sick mind.
This book is a better book for hipsters who have time to smoke a bowl and talk about their findings and clues. Or if they dont smoke, then I guess they could do shrooms, or even just drink some coffee. I just dont want to devote that much time to a book. It is a fictitious horror story that is multi layers and in the end doesnt reveal all the answers. The whole book is fiction. I didnt care about any of the characters. I dont even care about this book.
But that is ok cause this book doesnt care about me. I know, I know, all the cool kids are reading it. But I was never very cool. If you read it and feel bad cause you dont feel like you fit in with the cool kids, come join the rest of us who read books that actually have an ending. Some happy, some sad. We will save you a seat, and half caf, soy latte with a caramel drizzle and a muffin low fat of course.
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