I'll echo dragonmagelet in saying that the pretentious fannish air around the book put me off it. People all coloring in the word, assuring me avidly that it was the scariest thing they've ever read and will ever read -- is it just me or is there a bit of posturing to that, sometimes? I think people of a certain set are a lot more willing to cite a book like House of Leaves as Scariest Ever than admit that the alien bursting out of the guy's stomach in Alien actually scared them more than anything. People like the term "psychological horror," it's cerebral -- conventional horror films are mockable, lowbrow, ridiculous, how could you get scared by something ridiculous. Well, I gotta say it doesn't matter how ridiculous it is, some big nasty jumping the fuck out at me on a movie screen is not a pleasant experience. Neither is seeing a human body with any kind of horrible thing done to it. It's cheap shock value, but it works. I hate horror films, but as far as scary goes, the badly made up girl crawling out of the TV in The Ring does it for me a lot harder than House of Leaves.

However, I hate being scared. Though I did only find House of Leaves kind-of-creepy, I liked it. I'm not gonna say it changed my life or anything, but it was well-written, atmospheric, and just plain cool. I love frame tale stuff, I like documents-within-works, I enjoyed the whole thing a lot. I admit I found Karen and Navidson's relationship and reactions to the house a bit gender-stereotypical but that's neither here nor there.

This comment was originally going to be a one-liner wicked burn on thebookyoucrew, you know! The problem was I couldn't think of the one-liner. :P