In the Lake of the Woods is about John Wade, recently failed U.S. Senate candidate and Vietnam veteran, and his wife Kath. After his loss in the primaries John and Kath retreat to a lakeside cabin in northern Minnesota. Everything is peaceful and life as usual between the unhappily married couple when late one night Kath goes missing. The rest of the novel is spent learning about John’s violent experiences in Vietnam, the growth and demise of his relationship with Kath, and the nature of her disappearance. Rather than building this story as a traditional mystery, O’Brien chose to sprinkle in several different Evidence chapters throughout the book. Each one takes a new look at what might have happened to Kath, and ultimately leaves the reader with the choice to decide which scheme they liked better. I won’t spoil any of them here, but let me know if you’ve read this I’d like to know what you think happened.

The horrors John Wade faced in Vietnam are the most difficult I’ve read from Tim O’Brien. There were multiple instances where I was in a strong reading groove, but then I’d read a Vietnam chapter and I’d have to put the book down. Despite these scenes being hard for me to swallow, they are also some of the strongest passages of imagery that O’Brien has ever written. Don’t let the tough parts deter you from picking up this book though.

While reading I noticed, as have others, that O’Brien peppered in some of his classic characters and scenes that can be found in his other stories. I’m pretty positive these are recycled because they have great personal value to O’Brien, but I have also seen that some people find it to be trite at this point. One returning character type is the Native American soldier serving alongside the main character, another is the guy who steps on a landmine and is blown into a tree, and of course the main character who has the opportunity to escape to Canada.

In the end, I really enjoyed the book. I gave it 5 stars in my journal and over on Goodreads. Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think.

Last time I set out to write about House of Leaves I had intended to finish off everything I had to say. Then I had banged out almost 500 words about Johnny Truant and decided that if I expected anyone to read these, then Navidson should probably get his own write-up as well. For the sake of brevity, here we go!

Will Navidson and Karen Green lived within a rather tumultuous love affair. Karen, a former model, and Navy, a globetrotting photojournalist, have a semi-happy life, with two children, but they wanted more. They wanted a house to call their own, a home where they would be together and their children could grow up happily with both parents around. A few weeks of happiness, then a strange hallway between two rooms and an extra quarter inch. Then a trip across the country, and upon return a mysterious, ashen hallway has appeared. That was a quick rehash of the events that led to Navidson’s final decent into the house alone.

As much pain as the shifting house caused this family, the chain of events eventually comes full circle to help Navidson understand where his love and attention belongs. The house leads to a reconciliation between Navy and Tom, his twin brother. Navidson also began to see that the house was causing him to lose so much in his life, and that it needed to be ended. His last adventure into the house was to find finality. To see what happened at the end. He wanted the darkness to overtake him, and leave his family alone.

I feel that there’s a lot that can be said on this subject, how much do I personally want to write about it and analyze it? Not much more at all. I’ve just about crossed the line of too much analyzing , and I’ll start ruining the book for myself. So to circumvent that I’ll jump to my conclusion, too bad I don’t have a mat.

Karen Green, no matter how much she disapproved of Navy’s actions, she loved him absolutely. The ultimate proof of this was her willingness to not only enter the house alone, but to walk into the darkness within. She turned her back on everything in life in hopes of finding Will Navidson a final time. That my friends, is love.

Today I’m here to show you guys my fancy new journal! At Indigo Bridge we have a super neat Moleskine display, and this past Friday we received two of their Passions Book Journals. Naturally I was thrilled, as these journals have been nearly impossible to get into stock, much less keep in stock. I haven’t added anything to the journal yet, but it’s mine. My awesome mom bought it for me, along with some other goodies that I will be sharing soon!

This journal will be great for me to keep handwritten notes about what I’m reading, while I’m reading it. I’m terrible at remembering to type my notes, especially since I usually read just before bed. So here’s to hoping that the post quality will only go up here.

Do you keep a book journal, or any journal for that matter?

This is part one of the end of my House of Leaves series. I did some reading and some thinking. A lot of people have spent a long time discussing the many, many nuances from this book. I will be more than happy to discuss the book with everyone that’s read it, and wants to raise some new points with me; however I’ve decided that for the purpose of this blog I’m only going to expand on what I personally took away from the book. Bear in mind that this blog will be shorter than my initial feelings, and contains some ideas inspired and accepted from the Wikipedia article on House of Leaves.

At the heart of it House of Leaves is a love story, or stories even. The top most layer revolves around Johnny Truant and love in many forms. We see Truant through a difficult phase in his life, but from his writings we learn about much of his past. At first the only love Johnny is struggling with is finding a woman to complete him; his stories of sexual promiscuity, and his complete infatuation with “Thumper”. As he sinks deeper into his obsession with compiling The Navidson Record we start to see that there are questions within Johnny about the agape his mother, Pelafina, deserved, and the self-love that humans need to be able to prosper and remain happy.

Toward the end of story we see Truant going through some positive changes. Most of them occurred after he came across the band in New Mexico. Where he met someone who cared about him and his story more than anything. He left the band to their thoughts, and never let them know who he was, but it seemed to me that those people caring about him truly helped him see some positive light in life.

I’m still not entirely sure about Truant’s feelings toward his mother. The Whalestoe Letters is immensely helpful in seeing Pelafina’s worldview, and the constant love for a son that appears to have abandoned her. Though Johnny seems absolutely lost between whether his mother was strangling him or hugging him after the hot oil incident. What do you guys think? For me I think Johnny comes to realize that his mother was taken away to Whalestoe for the good of everyone. She needed the supervision found there, and he acknowledges that she believes everything she ever did to him, was truly out of love for him.

Truant is a difficult character to pin down in totality. He’s broken. He’s a liar. He’s trapped. There is enough happening to him that entire dissertations could be written solely concerning the life and feelings of Johnny Truant. Please discuss him with me in the comments though!

I loved this page not only because it starts with an Edgar Allan Poe quote, continues with a solid paragraph of Braille, and of course has the Braille translated in a footnote. You may not like it, but I loved the poem in the Braille. No other page stuck with me as much.

After this post I’m going to put up a small collection of other examples of pages from the books, but I want to see your favorite pages too!

It took much longer to get through House of Leaves, than I originally thought it would. Between visitors, work, and enjoying the summer months in other ways, I allowed myself to meander through the long ashen hallways found within the Navidson’s house. I’ve decided that there is a lot I’d like to share from this book, and to do so properly is going to take more than one post.

To start I’m just going to share the basic lasting effects from this story, and make a few comments about its arrangement. I’m do not intend to release any information in this post that would spoil the book for someone else, but if I come across a section that I feel might be a little too revealing, I’ll make sure you can skip over them without too much effort.

The book is presented innocently enough as a non-fiction write up on the documentary film The Navidson Record by Zampanò, of course there are also the hundreds of footnotes and tangents presented by The Editors and Johnny Truant. As I made my way through the book I quickly discovered that the notes surrounding Johnny Truant are just as important to the development of the over all feeling and characters of the story as the Minotaur mythos.

If you’ve heard anything about this book it’s probably been one of two things: It’s terrifying and will most likely induce nightmares. The text is arranged in such a manner that the person running the printing press is either a child, or totally unstable. For me, there were no nightmares. I can see how under the correct circumstances, or with enough claustrophobia, this book could be quite distressing. I don’t think I can say it enough, I do not recommend this book to anyone who suffers from extreme bouts of claustrophobia; however Danielewski’s ability to relay the vast emptiness within the house is one of my top reasons to recommend this book.

The printing on the other hand, is exactly what you’ve heard. It will have you turning the book to angles you’ve never read at before. You’ll be looking for people to translate things for you, and mirrors to read backward text, you’ll wish you knew Braille and there are a couple bars of music. Your pulse will increase, you will become anxious and nerve wracked. You’ll be reading faster than you’ve ever read before, tensions are building, something is coming but then it just stops. Dead. In the middle of a sentence. The formatting is most often presented in a manner representative of the feelings of the characters or the rearrangement of the house.

All in all I really enjoyed every piece of information contained in this book. I have nothing but heartfelt care for Johnny Truant, and a bizarre curiosity about whether that never-ending house of leaves still stands in Virginia today.

I still haven’t read any additional research into the book. I wanted to give my first, totally untainted, thoughts about the book before I delved into that. I’m going to do some reading this afternoon, but it may be put off for a week. We have family coming to visit!

/*Neat!
//Nicole showed this site, I Write Like, to me tonight. I’ve been playing around on it, to //see how many different authors I can collect. When I ran the above paragraph it //returned:

I write like
Kurt Vonnegut

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

//Awesome? I think so.*/

A little morose, but classically Vonnegut.

This was originally published in December 2009.

• The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
• The Prince and the Pauper
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
• The American Claimant
• Tom Sawyer Abroad
• Pudd’nhead Wilson
• Tom Sawyer, Detective
• Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
• A Double Barrelled Detective Story
• A Dog’s Tale
• A Horse’s Tale
• The Mysterious Stranger

Will I make it through this list? I don’t know. That’s a lot of reading, and I’m kind of a slow reader. There are actually a lot more novels here than I was aware of. I will definitely hit the big novels, and then maybe the lesser known ones that sound interesting. On the bright side, I’m pretty positive that all of his novels are public domain now. Too bad that doesn’t mean that I can just take the novels from stores. That would be neat.

What do you guys think? Are you Mark Twain fans, or did school ruin him for you?

*Edit- 2:32pm June 16, 2010*
I decided to add in something you can gather from the book’s dust jacket. Essentially, the story concerns the Navidson family and their house that is larger on the inside than the outside.
***

However if you’re wanting to know more about this book without taking the dive and purchasing it, check out either of the sites below.

• House of Leaves’ Website
• House of Leaves on Wikipedia

If you do decide to purchase it, please support your local booksellers.

For those of you not familiar with either form of this story it’s the tale of Chris McCandless’ sojourn across the Western United States and eventually his fateful march into the Alaskan bush in 1992. McCandless dubbed himself Alexander Supertramp, and took on many different identities in his travels, but almost each was some iteration of the name Alex. He left without notice after his collegiate graduation, and before going home to see his parents. He made his way west into the deserts of Arizona and Nevada, down into Mexico and eventually back up into California. He also made great strides in South Dakota, where he settled down for a bit and did some farm work.

Through out his journey Alex was constantly befriending and impressing new people. He left every person he spent any time alongside, with a feeling of love and respect toward him. One such man, who Alex appeared to have the greatest impact on, even renounced his faith in God after learning of Alex’ ill-fate in Alaska.

One of the hardest things about this book, is getting yourself to understand that while Alex was interesting, intelligent and at least a little brave, his story is full of arrogance and tragedy as well. His great adventure feels both awesome, and overly self-indulgent at the same time. I spent a lot of my time reading this trying to decide if I was jealous, or relieved that I’d never follow in at least a few of his footsteps.

The final words Chris penned before his passing, are probably some of the most humbling words I’ve ever read:

“I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD, GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL [sic]!”

The epilogue tells of his parents visiting his final base camp in Alaska. It’s touching and beautiful. I considered skipping it, but in the end couldn’t resist reading it. The sense of both loss and joy his parents display while exploring the abandoned bus are quite unique. I don’t believe my own parents would react the same way, especially so soon after the events.

In the end if you want to know the story of Alexander Supertramp, you can just watch the film, but if you really want to gain some insight into Chris McCandless and the many people he effected throughout his journey then please take the time to read the book. Don’t ever forget that non-fiction is good for the soul too.