I finished reading House of Leaves. Loved the main story. Hated the side story.
I had a similar experience with that book. I loved the Navidson Record, including exploring it through "Found document review of" with Zampano. Johnny Truant, though, always seemed to get in the way. Some of his digressions, particularly the early frame material that implied some "maybe magic, maybe mundane" around Zampano's effects, could be gripping but when it got into his life-in-a-daze, Gdansk Man, and so on... I found myself not really caring.
Recent Reads:
I've been getting into Light Novels, starting with volumes 1-6 of Kagerou Daze. Now this is a story I'd delved into before -- with the KagePro songs, the
Mekakucity Actors anime, and the Kagerou Daze manga... but I think while the songs remain my favorite media connected to the project, the novels may have become my favorite execution of the story. What's interesting about it is that the story is NEVER exactly the same when it hops media. Because the whole premise is an unstable time loop (or perhaps because the creator just wants to explore alternate possibilities) events actually play out differently, ranging from subtle little changes to massive divergences. As such, each format isn't just a window looking out onto the same scene, they're windows looking out onto different, overlapping sections of a scene. Er, that metaphor might be a bit strained. But the point is, let's say that in the novels, uniquely, you get to hear the inner thoughts of the characters alongside a clear series of events -- that's true. Maybe there are some thoughts in the manga, but not to the same level of introspection. But that's not all you get different; in the various versions, the pasts and relationships of the characters may have developed in different ways, so you're not just getting, say, Shintaro's thoughts on the same encounter with Takane, there might be a lot more to it. This is kind of explored in the songs -- Lost Time Memory, for instance, presents two very different timelines that lead its main character Shintaro to the same place, but for different reasons and with different results, but I've really come to appreciate it across the various adaptations.
I also read one called "Battle Divas". I wrote up a big long review then didn't really have anything to do with it. If anyone wants to see that, I can post it. TLDR I nearly threw the freaking book at the wall it was going so badly, but then somehow it turned around, pulled out of the nose dive and... okay it's still junk food for the mind, with no real substance, but at least it manages to be acceptable junk food and not a putrid brainless steaming pile. And off the premise I'm not sure I could have asked for better.
Current Read:
Once upon a time there was a webcomic called Riven Sol, and it kicked ass. OK, the CGI-rendered characters and environments were a little hard to get into... I always have trouble with CGI webcomics -- like I think Dreamland Chronicles looked a million times better once it went to traditional art. Uncanny Valley, I guess. That's beside the point. It was sort of a lovecraftian sci-fi setup with some good worldbuildng, interesting characters, and a plot that was starting to get really good and twisted. It's since vanished from the web. Entirely. Like I don't know if even the wayback machine has it. But between when it went on fatal hiatus and when it 404'd, I found out that the author of it wrote a sci-fi novel called
Exile's Burn and dropped it on my Amazon wish list. Years later, I got the book (along with a bunch of other unrelated books) and now, years after that, I'm finally getting around to reading it. Just started.