The knack of reading this book is either being rich enough to afford a physical copy or tricking some-one into gift you the same. Second way worked for me and after seeing the hard print alone did I realize the extent of detail that was lost in ebook reproductions. And the book comes with its own snazzy soundtrack :) 
 tl;dr : weird and aweosme 
 This book is a well-researched scholarly article on a fictional non-existent film, with tons of references and footnotes, also happens to be written by a blind mad man, compiled by a messed up tattoo artist, and published by some mysterious editors. Inception gives a familiar yet novel Lovecraftian feel, Pickmans Model or Cool air to be exact, where protagonist learns about Zampano(this book's Pickman or Dr.Monaz), posthumously though - a weird guy who lived a secluded life shutting himself in a nearby rented apartment, with his uncanny research. Lead soon finds himself obsessed with the dead guy's newfound materials which turns out to be on a strange in-explainable homemade movie. The film contains some seemingly real life footage - experiences Navidson, a Pulitzer prize winning photojournalist and his family encountered on moving to a new house, which happens to be bigger on the inside than outside. And it's not a Tardis with perception filter. Well, the House rearranges on itself in space and leaves one five and a half minute hallway down to earth, sometime soon after being occupied by this young family. 
 Navidson film records are more like those eerie mad Tardis episodes, or the mysterious Island and Black smoke of Lost. House messing up with its inhabitants, making fun of known physics and logic. Those Hi8 records deals more with psychological effects the house has on the family and people associated, aspects of male dominance and female strive for attention, relationship studies, semantics etc. And reader knows all this because, its written in the form of compiled research with footnotes, multiple references, verbatims, transcripts of interviews, journal entries and so forth. Truant, Navidson and Zampano are shown as confused males who were deprived of their right to name what they inherently understand as their own. 
 With a preface that says - This is not for you, the fully remastered coloured edition pretty much looks like the compilation House of Leaves boasts itself to be. Accords of Truant is in Typeface and Navidson records are in Times New Roman, and unlike other books where different timelines are separated with chapters, here the stories pretty much meddle each other, leaving readers only one distinction element - font. Also Navidson and Truant are expressed like two poles of personality, a well organized successful family guy trying to understand the anomaly in his newly bought house to a washed out tattoo artist in company of hookers researching on the former. More and more he dwells into the research, more is he lost from his social life, much like his predecessor Zampano. 
 This edition was extremely faithful to its commitment on colour coding and fonts - every time the word house was printed they kept it blue, Minotaur parts red and striked out since Zampano wanted it off his research collection. In fact the publishers were so committed that they blued haus in a german name burghausen which was a reference, on a side note, by a right column, printed inverted. 
 Inside its splintered timeline, the book was as sick as the House itself and had me a tad obsessed over the Navidson Records as well. Much surprisingly there is little follow up, except for 
 The Whalestone letters 
 , a series of letters from Truants mom over her life at asylum. They were elegantly written and heartrendingly beautiful, while serving it's purpose of giving the much suggested confusion for an open ending. 
 There were pages that needed to be read on mirror, stroked off red references, nonsense blue boxes with and without text, nonsense blue boxes with black colour, gaps in pages that made reading feel like watching a tennis match from net-side, pages with few lines, single lines, single words even, and prints that needed to be turn in 45, 90, 180 degrees and its multiples. It did't end there, there were transcripts of interviews with people like King, Donna Tartt, Kuberick, Hofstadter, David Copperfield and more. Verbatims in French, German, Greek, Latin and other fonts that I couldn't fathom. Links to legends and stories like Minotaur, Beatrice, Dante, Bible, references that link back to book by page numbers. Maybe to add agoraphobia of house exploration, there were pages where writings got squeezed into descending smaller blocks, much like the reducing walls. 
 "Doorways offer passage but windows offer vision", And this book offered both, once you are past the initial vagueness and dilatoriness. 
 Here is a link to the track mentioned by the end of the book, five and a half minute hallway, from album 'Haunted' by Poe, She is Mark's sister and this was done as a companion to the book. Pretty snazzy for a book to have its own soundtrack. five and a half minute hallway 
 House of Leaves is a satirical proof that given the required resources and right amount of motivation people can research on anything to any extend much like this review. And Navidson Records if exists would have been the new age 
 Blair Witch Project 
 or 
 Paranormal Activity 
 , and House of leaves itself would be 
 The Fourth Kind. 
 . Within all its weirdness it manages to be a well written open thriller that keeps you on the edge. I would give the book 5 stars for being weird and awesome. 
 Originally published on https://10thandnoble.wordpress.com/20...