The first time I read this book was in high school, and I remember feeling punched in the gut, mind blown by the labyrinth of sadness and loss trapped in those pages, by the deconstruction of my expectations of how a novel should look, feel, sound, progress. I remember trying to search online for a hint of the truth of the characters and layers of stories within, but coming up empty. What source could I trust? Was the creature roaring in the dark one or many or one made of many? How old was that house, really? Why did it shift and churn and singe and swallow? How did Johnny's manuscript escape into the world without having completed it? How can this story be caught in the loop of being written and burned to nothing at the same time? I carried the story with(in) me quietly for all these years, never removing the bookmark from the index at the end. The decision to re-read *House of Leaves* was the best I could have made. I realize now how much I missed back then, how brilliant and twisted and layered and intricate and carefully selected every letter, space, and breath truly is. It remains one of the most troubling, haunting, emptying, disquieting, and brilliant books I have ever read. I still feel trapped in its circuitous orbit, roaming an endless staircase seeking light and answers for Johnny, for his mother, for Zampano', for Navy and Karen, for the underground circuit of seekers who have seen and not seen this impossible place, yet finding myself still in the belly of the whale. The book itself is both the labyrinth and the Minotaur at its heart. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys a challenge to the senses and expectations of what a novel can and should do - and how it's done - and to anyone looking to get lost in a labyrinth of love and fear and the human condition, of impossibility, of echoes of time and space, of the infinite cycle of creation and destruction.