...And This is Why Everyone Hates Book Reviewers

Posted By: Elle Ewok

Today is my birthday. Remember when birthdays were exciting, fun and happy occasions? Yeah, me neither.

The point is that Spudbabe got me House of Leaves (2000) by Mark Z. Danielewski for my Birthday. I have been wanting this book for a long time. Anyway, I was all excited to start reading until I skimmed the following review excerpt on the back cover:

"A rollicking Pynchonesque oddity, a Nabokovian linguistic obsession, and a Borgesian unreality. [House of Leaves] jumps and skips and plays with genre-wrecking abandon, postmodern panache, and an obsessive imaginative scope that absolutely shames most books on the market today."

Well, isn't that PRECIOUS.

"Pynchonesque"? Seriously? Look Gravity's Rainbow is on the bottom of my to-read pile and it isn't leaving that spot anytime soon. As such, this reference is meaningless to me. But not to you San Fransisco Examiner and Chronicle, oh no not to you.

There are so many aspects of this short little excerpt that make me want to vomit I am not even going to get into it. This is why you are better off reading reviews here where our contributors are Appalachian clingers who are likely too drunk to regard themselves with any sense of importance whatsoever. The only literary-adjectives created here will be in the nature of "Hogwarts-esque."

I am not sure I can bring myself to read the book anymore. First Nancy Pelosi and now this, if San Fansisco didn't have such delicious sour-dough bread I would boycott the entire city.