Average story that relies heavily on format. Existential haunted house is not really my genre in the first place. The main things I personally want in a book are characters I care about and/or a strong narrative. I get that experimental writing can work sometimes, but I have a hard time with writing that relies on a gimmick for "meaning." The characters are boring and the narrative itself was quite uninteresting as a horror fan. Maybe I'm missing something since this is on so many horror lists.

This book was amazing; life-changing. This book was terrible; waste of time. I read this book. I did not read this book. I am terrified of this book, the pages cut my fingers off, I died from from blood loss. My fingers were never cut, I didn't die from blood loss. Of course, there is no book. There never was a book.

2 stars? 3 stars? 2.5 stars? I have resisted reading this book for a long time simply because I do not generally go for pomo books. In my opinion, if a book can't stand on the strength of it's plot and must resort to gimmicks, then it's probably not that great of a book. In some ways that holds true for this book. I actually quite enjoyed the Zampano account of the Navidson Record about a house with an ever changing internal structure. The part of this book detailing the excursions by the characters within the house was enjoyable and immensely readable.

But then this book has all the additional ramblings and footnotes written by Johnny Truant. Truant's contributions are incoherent, inconsistent, full of his and his friend Lupe's sexual conquests. For me, Danielewski's inclusion of this aspect of the story was distracting and annoying. I get that, for some people in this story, just reading an account of the Navidson Record can absorb and consume their life to the point that the horror of the story becomes a very real thing. Johnny Truant is one of these people, and his rambling footnotes are in fact a record of his descent into madness, which resulted from the discovery of Zampano's extensive cataloging and research into the Navidson Record. It was still an annoying aspect of this book for me.

Danielewski, the author, should certainly get a massive amount of credit just for writing and assembling this massive story. This book contains an astounding level of detail and imagination. This alone probably grants my rating an additional full star. Sometimes that creativity gets a bit much and it was very difficult to be sure where a footnote or sentence continued. Sometimes it was necessary to skip several pages ahead, and then read backwards page by page. I don't know that these oddities contributed positively to the overall reading experience.

i don't need this scary sh*t in my life or on my bedside table. onto something life-affirming.

My initial reading was courtesy of the local library. Yes, I had seen Blair Witch previously at the theatre and felt empty afterwards. One could also ditto the fact that I had read Infinite Jest by this point, the first time, if I may smug.

Everything worked for me during that initial reading. There were just enough fuck-ups surrounding me that the authorial tension was palpable. I found a great copy a few years later and I found myself drawn after my wife and I bought a house, the cause is obvious.

I bought a copy for my best friend last year and have been badgering my friends to select it for a group read.

Here is a truly haunting review which affords the novel justice: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/416206083
2016 -- plunging in again. My birthday afforded the chance to reflect on my younger self's first reading, a time emblazoned with dysfunction yet hope. There was a golden hope about things, a progress, a shock of the new. Now I find myself immobilized by the rampant daddy issues in the novel. The almost autistic distancing via footnotes and the whirl of the cursed condition leaves its hosts/victims lost in serial annotations. Somehow I find this fitting and terrifying.

Lot of hype but I like Raw Shark Texts better

bruh