Finished House of Leaves over the weekend, by Mark Danielewski. I figure I spelled his name right. As you can gather, I'm totally over the world about the book. Actually, I think you should read it, because it's great fun. But I'm at work, and that always just overwhelms me with enthusiasm and joy.

Sigh.

Anyway, House of Leaves is a strange book, about a guy named Johnny Truant who moves into an L.A. apartment of a man named Zampano. There's a tilde over the o at the end. Anyway, Zampano is dead, and that's why Johnny gets the apartment. While moving in, Johnny finds a manuscript on which Zampano was working, about a movie - a documentary - called The Navidson Record.

The Navidson Record is about a guy named Navidson - a Pulitzer prize winning photographer - and his girlfriend Karen, and their kids, who move into a house that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. And Zampano wrote his book all about this. And Johnny tries to take the scraps of the book and put them together for whatever reason. Johnny becomes obsessed with it. And in doing so, his life goes down the tubes. He loses his job. He loses his friends. He loses lovers. All because he's reading this book.

Throughout the book, there are quotes from famous people about The Navidson Record. Quotes from people like Stephen King, just to name one. But of course, The Navidson Record doesn't actually exist in our world. And the funny thing is, it doesn't actually exist in the world of House of Leaves either. At least, Johnny can't find it.

One of the best things about the book is that Johnny is an unreliable narrator. He actively changes something about The Navidson Record to reflect his own life. He writes to us that it's a better parallel. So how much of this story is true? How much of it is false? In the end, I think the answer is that it doesn't matter. What really matters is this: Is the story any good?

Yes, it is. Now go buy it.