Reading

I was cheered up yesterday by a present from S: the new novel by Mark Z. Danielewski called Only Revolutions. It looks like it's going to be fun: two parallel stories running (physically) through the book in opposite directions; 360 pages of 180 words each of each story; the stories begin taking up most of the page but shrink as they progress and you move towards the beginning of the opposite story. There's a nice summary that doesn't give away the plot (as if that mattered...) if you go here. Sounds a bit pretentious, I know, but I love that kind of thing. And like all good stuff these days, there is a funky website to go along with it. (Click on the picture of the dust jacket...)

I'm excited because S and I both loved his first novel, The House of Leaves, which used similar typographical tricks and was packed with fake scholarship and odd footnotes. But most of all The House of Leaves was genuinely frightening. I'm not much of a fan of horror films or fiction, but this was a very disturbing read; disturbing in a good way, I mean, because some of the parts of the story stayed with me for some time. It's certainly worth looking out for if you haven't read it already. Of course, not everyone likes it, but that's the way with all fiction. Others did. (I cannot stand Jane Austen... 'Oh, Mr ___, would you like to take a turn around the garden?'... Don't tell me it's all a clever and witty take on contemporary manners. It's just pants.)