It’s not odd at all! I’m so sorry for your loss. My mom died when I was 18, and it took me several years to learn how to cope. Dealing with their absence is one thing, but figuring out how to remember / honor them is a different challenge that’s entirely unique to the relationship you had with them.

My mom knew me as an avid creative writer and someone who could often find words where others could not. After she died, I drove myself crazy putting pressure on myself to become an admirable writer and a master of literature because, I thought it’s what she wanted me to be. For years, I failed to reach unattainable standards I set for myself, and I hated myself for letting her down. I eventually grew tired of the self-loathing and sought therapy to learn about mindfulness and loving myself despite my flaws and fears. It was during this time that I realized that what my mom wanted for me was never to be a world-renowned creative writer - it was to be proud of the deeply empathetic person I am, and to partner that attribute with my words to create open dialogues with people who may be suffering and in need of healing.

Anyway, my point in sharing all is to encourage you to be patient with yourself. House of Leaves is a hard ass book to read; I only ever read it fully once when I was in high school, and I’ve failed to reread it ever since, though I tried. Whether or not you manage to finish it, I’m certain you’ll find great ways to pay tribute to your mom, if you haven’t already. As for tips to reading the book… I’d say don’t be upset if you lose focus and sort of gloss over multiple paragraphs or pages. It’s not written in a style that’s easily consumed, considering the density of some paragraphs and the various fake references noted throughout. If you can find any piece of it that’s of interest to you, I’d say latch onto that, whether it’s one of the two main stories being told (Johnny’s or Navidson’s), or admiration for the weirdness of it all. If you’re just not an avid reader, maybe build up to it by spending time reading books you do find interesting first, then coming back to it; there’s nothing holding you to reading it right away.

Sorry for the novella of a comment. All the best. :)

Grieving is one day at a time, reading is one page at a time.

My only note would be don’t read it as a puzzle to solve. Just take it in. Let your subconscious handle the rest.

I love hearing about the connection you had with your Mom, and I hope you’re well!

Just dropping by to offer a different opinion: Perhaps you’re not in the right time of your life to make your way through it? Shelving it and keeping it ready as a goal for the future is totally fine in kind of a, “I’m gonna conquer this thing one day, Mom!” sort of way. You can know that the connection with your Mom is there in that text, and it will be there for you when you’re ready for it.

I am sorry for your loss. And you wanting the connection is understandable. From what I know, the book is quite demanding. I haven’t read it myself, so can’t offer any suggestion. But I do hope you find your way.

However, sometimes a book becomes more approachable with time. I have spurned books that at later age reeled me in. Cherish your mum’s copy of the book and keep coming back to it :) wishing you peace

Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t get into it - I love hard books but this one didn’t feel worth it to me in the end. A few absolutely incendiary sections, for sure, his wordplay in the echo/narcissus retelling chapter left me speechless. But the rest felt like more artifice than art, i never got what makes people adore it.

I’m very sorry to hear about your mom 🩵 it’s sweet you want to feel closer to her.

Having just made my way through HoL this summer, I can tell you that it is indeed a slog. The only thing advice I can really give is to stick with it and take all the time you need to get through it. I thought it was pretty slow to start, and Johnny’s sections can be infuriating, but the end result is a fun, creative, utterly unnerving experience.

Not the easiest read in the world, I tried and couldn’t do it, but I was also dealing with a lot of stress that I think contributed. I do want to pick it back up at some point though.

I’m sorry about your mom. I have my brothers beat up copy of house of leaves, he died 15 years ago, and I still haven’t gotten through it. Not sure if I even want to finish it but I’ve tried so many times lol. It’s now in a box in my in laws garage with some other precious books I kept after I moved countries. Hoping to get my couple boxes of books next year. Maybe I’ll try again when I bring my books home.

I’m so sorry for your loss. I know exactly what you mean. Going over the same words your mom did and holding the same copy she did does feel like a valuable connection. I did the same when my dad passed.

Onto House of Leaves. I really liked it, but the narrative structure is very bizarre. The story in the text versus the story in the footnotes can make it harder to follow. You do need to read everything, including the appendices, but not everything is important. There are a lot of superfluous details about the architecture and the point is basically just that the interior doesn’t match the exterior. So, read everything but you don’t need to worry about memorize every detail. I know this is personal preference, but I read the footnotes in larger chunks when they continued on for multiple pages. Normally, most people read the main text, stop at a footnote, and read that whole footnote, then go back to the text. But for HoL a lot of people stop at the end of the page. I think stopping at the end of the page cuts off the story and makes the book harder to follow BUT Danielewski did it intentionally because he wanted people to read the book in a slightly different order every time making the book its own House of Leaves.

Dive in and read it late at night. That’s how I do it because someone told me not to do it.

The whole book was wacky to me and I loved it. The imaginative use of footnotes and story-ception, and crazy text alignment… Some parts were difficult to get past, but it was worth it in the end!

I enjoyed house of leaves by reading the main story, and skipping the footnotes.

The first half or so of House of Leaves has a deliberately dense typography (not sure if that’s the right word). The font is smaller, set closer together and there are a lot more words per page. So it feels like it is taking a long time to read because you’re not clocking as many pages. Keep that in mind when you feel like it’s a slog.

I wouldn’t skip parts, especially in your case, because the parts you’d be skipping are the ‘difficult’ ones and you said your mom not only enjoyed difficult reads but it’s her favourite book, so read the whole thing. I’m not a fan of skipping parts in general because the whole has been put together by the author for a reason and the different parts interact with each other.

In my copy of the book, the footnotes are in the text, not all grouped together at the end, which is how they should be.

Are you trying to read all the story bits at the same time? I found it easier to just focus on either the main text or the footnotes, and then read the other part afterwards :)

It’s okay to take breaks. I read about 2-3 chapters at a time, then would take a break to fully digest and marinate until I felt like picking it up again. I even would finish other books in those breaks. Sometimes because life is busy and then sometimes because I have to process what I read.