For what did I know?

Books Read in May 2012

1. May 7: The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe
2. May 7: The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe
3. April 22 - May 14: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
4. March 19 - May 12: The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl’s Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá’í Revelation by Nabíl
5. May 13 - 28: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
6. May 28 - 30: Miss Peregrine’s House of Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs


Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body.

— Mark Z. Danielewski - House of Leaves


First, he reads a few lines by match light and then as the heat bites his fingertips he applies the flame to the page. Here then is one end: a final act of reading, a final act of consumption. And as the fire rapidly devours the paper, Navidson’s eyes frantically sweep down over the text, keeping just ahead of the necessary immolation, until as he reaches the last few words, flames lick around his hands, the fire retreats, dimming, its light suddenly spent, the book is gone leaving nothing behind but invisible traces already dismantled in the dark.

— Mark Z. Danielewski - House of Leaves