Alan -
Hopscotch sounds amazing. I'll put it on my list but not sure when I'll get to it.
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I'm digging my way through House of Leaves and it's an absolute clusterfuck but also one of the coolest books I've ever read. Danielewski has a newer series that I've been wanting to get into but I gotta finish this one first.
HoL is fucking amazing. I've been keeping up with The Familiar too (about to finish the most recent volume this weekend) and it is even more insane. I'm happy to share my thoughts on it if you care.
Just barely saw this. I'm about 400 pages into HoL so I've got a pretty decent chunk left. I bought the first book of The Familiar and flipped through it to see what I'm in for, it looks pretty insane. Isn't he supposed to do like 15 of them? I don't know how he can keep that all together but he's definitely working on another level than most writers. I'm at kind of a slow part in HoL but I think I'll try and power through it tonight and get to more of the weird shit.
Depending on how you're reading HoL, you're probably further along than you think. I remember when I read it, showing my friends my copy of the book and saying "I'm barely halfway through" but having like 2 or 3 bookmarks in the page and them saying "well, it looks like you've read a lot!" before I realized that I was more like 3/4 of the way through it. I love that book and should probably re-read it sooner than later.
As for
The Familiar, he's actually doing 27 volumes - which is even more insane. It's basically like HoL and
The 50 Year Sword but ramped up to a million and throw in more imagery and picture. It's insane but what I appreciate about Danielewski is that it never feels random or pointless. You feel ok trusting that he knows what he's doing and what he's aiming for. He might not always succeed (see
Only Revolutions), but it's never pointless.
What I find so fascinating about
The Familiar is that he's balancing 9 storylines and even though you know that they'll all eventually intersect, you can imagine that being dragged out in a meaningful, entertaining, and impactful way over 27 volumes. Except they're already starting to intersect 4 volume in. So that just makes me wonder how insane will it get later on?
But I finished Vol. 4, so I'm on to
By The Night in Chile by Bolano. It's neither an easy nor overly long read - I don't think Bolano is difficult to read but he's still thorough and dense and the whole book is around 110 pages long - but it's written as a rant basically so while it's easy to get wrapped up, you never are sure where you'll get a clean break to pull yourself out. So if you don't have an hour to spend on the story, it's difficult to pick the book up. Still intriguing but I'm basically reading it to try and get to my next Bataille book.