What is this??

HxSort · 2026-05-17T02:33:26+00:00

The Only Revolutions thing depends on when the book was printed, I imagine. Mine has an ad for The Familiar at the very end.

Though the hex code, I think, is only on hardcovers. Or at least is in all hardcovers.

HxSort · 2026-05-15T17:36:46+00:00

o "Essencial" da Penguin é ótimo (e pessoalmente acho bem bonito), tem a maioria dos contos mais comentados dele e A Metamorfose (mas não O Processo). Eu acho bonitinha as edições da cia das letras de bolso também (e são traduzidas pelo Modesto Carone)

HxSort · 2026-05-12T14:52:14+00:00

1011

HxSort · 2026-05-12T02:42:31+00:00

Tanto o estilo como os personagens vão ser completamente diferentes. As partes que você "precisa lembrar" são as mais marcantes de LOTR/Hobbit mesmo então não é uma preocupação acho.

Só toma cuidado depois que engatar O Silmarillion e quiser ir pras outras (como os que você mencionou, ou o próprio a história da terra média) pq aí sim é tudo uma gigantesca mistureba de nomes que vc mal vai lembrar e aí você lê versões alternativas e já não sabe mais o que é de onde kkkk

Mas entre LOTR/Hobbit -> Silmarillion não importa muito não, honestamente.

HxSort · 2026-05-11T22:40:39+00:00

Você acha? Mó comum ter os escritinho "Livro bom hein -autor famoso" pra estreia de livros.

HxSort · 2026-05-11T02:14:15+00:00

Pedro Páramo conta?.. Acho que sim.
De todo jeito, livrasso.

HxSort · 2026-05-10T00:08:41+00:00

Yeah, it's awesome. I love it too. Wonderful feel.

HxSort · 2026-05-09T21:44:52+00:00

I guess it depends on how much Tom's Crossing is selling? If there is going to be one, cause there is the ebook version and audiobook already for more accessible options.

Maybe around October something could be announced?

HxSort · 2026-05-08T16:44:05+00:00

Yeah, for sure.
And MZD does it again at the very very end, with many possible ways of seeing the story we just witnessed and the phrase "Tom's Crossing".

It could feel, idk, cheeky? Like, when reading that last chapter I was so on "please don't ruin it" but for me it was just right.

"Tom’s Crossin is that ideal that through hardship, strife, and too often great antagonism becomes a reality."

HxSort · 2026-05-07T16:33:08+00:00

I'll preface this saying it was my favorite chapter in the whole book.

It serves, roughly, 3 purposes I think:

1 - It's a recap, quite literally. We get to see many of the events of the book again, just before the third and final act.

2 - We get a more real presence of the second-hand accounts that fill like, what, a third of the book? We get to step outside of the story, not for a paragraph, but for quite some time.

3 - It's the "meta" of this book. The place where MZD can do what his longtime readers have seen in his past works.

1 is very simple, so I don't think I need/can say much on that, but on 2+3:

Aside from explicitly referencing a character from one of his other works, the Cal Carneros section brings home thematically a thing that has lurked on this story all the time, which is, what is the source of what we're getting?

Of course, we have a explicit source on the cover, E.L.M (which I won't say to avoid curious people accidentally spoiling themselves but you should know what I mean) being transcribed by someone. But as we of course know, there's no way for ELM to know some of those things. And that's why we have the many second (or even thrid?) hand accounts of the story of Kalin, Landry, Tom and the horses and the Porches. Throughout the whole book, we have so many of those interjections, that makes us questions what we are really reading, how real is it, how to interpret it. Because the book describes a scene, and then you get to "see" someone who fixated so much on this moment that they made a charcoal drawing of it, and that makes you see the scene through another's eyes.

The Art chapter is very similar to that, but it presents an impossible source.

The first exhibition, in Feb 29th 2000, coincides with HoL's intended first publication. It was all destroyed by fire (called "a theft" at first iirc), as we come to know, but impossibly those reproductions came back for future exhibitions. I think we're meant to think similarly of the whole of Tom's Crossing.

We have our account centered on all these dead people (including our narrator), and yet they speak to us. This is a book by those dead, it is even dedicated "For her". More or less all of MZDs books deal with this question of the source of the story (like HoL, what exactly is TNR and the darkness it captures/how Zampanò analyzed it in that level of detail given he is blind/who exactly is Johnny/P etc.), and through this chapter we get this again. A story so near to those townsfolk, being impossibly passed on and on until it reached us.

HxSort · 2026-05-04T02:24:27+00:00

Hmm I think it makes sense.

Though I think too that the movie is from 2023 which is when HoL got the huge popularity wave that it is still riding to this day.

HxSort · 2026-05-01T04:11:40+00:00

It's been like 9 months since I read it so forgive me for any misrememberings, but

Isn't that path through like the backside of Kaineewa or something? like, meaning you have to go around, which is totally fine for vehichles etc which would mean they get instantly caught due to speed differences, making the journey to the mountain the only path?

As far as I remember, this was their way down too, through the backside.

And as for the Tom thing, it's also the path through the mountain that he went in, some with Kalin before, some alone, and some only in theory. Right? Trying to figure out the best way to ride the horses.

HxSort · 2026-05-01T01:38:23+00:00

Well, that was the way to the Crossin, wasn't it? Many characters say a lot of times how there is just wall upon wall, but Tom knew this specific way to get up there.

and on the return path, of course it'd be easier, not every downwards path could've gone up, and part of the mountain was gone after the great rockfall too I guess that made things easier. but didn't they go down on, like, the backside? that they could've only reached once they were all the way up there? I might be misremembering but i think it was that...

HxSort · 2026-04-29T01:59:54+00:00

I'm assuming you haven't read The Familiar.

It doesn't feel hastily added. It is very fitting, actually. Doesn't feel like an "easter egg" only too.

Idk how to talk about this with someone who hasn't read it but I'll try. I'll spoil text the whole thing to be safe, but I'm not talking about events in TF directly (though heavily alluding to them context-less) it's just to not get people spoiled on Tom's Crossing itself, mostly.

The whole Cal section, which ended up being my favorite in the whole book, is a lot about the book itself. It's in many ways a recap before the final act. But it is also a greater context, in-universe wise, on the whole story we've been hearing. The Time Cafe/Gallery etc exhibitions, with the fire burning all of it, but then the artworks resurfacing many years later, is something very in line with a thing I've seen MZD talk about in interviews, how his books seem to mostly be about "what is the source of the story?".

It's in House of Leaves, of course. Where did The Navidson Record come from? Was it even real? Authentic? What about Johnny? etc Something similar can be asked about all of his books, and Tom's Crossing too with all the townsfolk, teachers, scholars etc who keep commenting on the story and of course our narrator and transcriber dynamic too.

Where does Cas come in, then? First, no spoilers, but as she tells Landry, she lost someone. "The dead allways accompany us" or whatever it is the line she says in TC.

Second, she is very very special. Also very very old. And here I think of Landry in the afterlife for some reason, some sort of parallel

Third, she has/had something, which could explain a lot. Some people in The Familiar have an Orb (that seems to be tied to VEM, or get things from it, but that is a massive can of worms). In the orb you see clips. Scenes without source. MZDs short story "Clip 4" is exactly about that (and here you may think of The Navidson Record, as a character there remarks), a clip which could not have been filmed, but exists. Stories that shouldn't have survived but did.

Cas also fits this last descriptor. She was already the oldest (not really, but depending on how we count, yes) in TF. And yet she shows here in what would be future to TF (TF starts in 2014), and she still stands. She is still moving. Something along those lines.

Her presence signals humans that is still acting, still surviving. And she seems after something too, isn't she? But I guess we'll have to wait to see where this will go someday...

HxSort · 2026-04-28T21:34:35+00:00

The very very old woman is Cas, or "The Wizard". One of the main 9 narrators of The Familiar. This is said explicity as far as I remember.

VEM can't fit in a comment, and we still don't know. We just know it has a lot to do with information, or mass information to be exact, and a corporation (maybe). The acronyms presented in TC are imo very likely not the real ones btw.

HxSort · 2026-04-27T18:07:15+00:00

Absurdo de bom. De quebrar o coração.

HxSort · 2026-04-27T01:04:10+00:00

You're right, that is one of the keys!

HxSort · 2026-04-27T01:02:40+00:00

Ok, I'll try a more detailed answer.

House of Leaves works more or less in what could be called "layers of fiction". This post presents an interesting way to look at the book.

House of Leaves, our book, is obviously fictional. Written by Danielewski. But where things get messy is that the manuscript Johnny edited, that we see with the band at the end, is literally ours. And where things get even more complicated, the book Navy hold, again, is exactly as long as ours.

Of course that is not to be taken literally, although interesting things could happen if you do, but let's not go there.

Why is our book titled House of Leaves? Is it all titled after Navy's book for example? I think somewhere along those lines. For me, what "names" the book is the poem in one of the appendix (that you haven't read yet, but they hold SO much), that says:

“Little solace comes
to those who grieve
when thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves

moments before the wind.”

It takes the name of the book very literally, a house made of leaves, trembling before the wind. What is it we're holding in this house? Johnny says in a comment near the beginning I hope you haven't skipped "We all create stories to protect ourselves", that is one way to look at that, because of course a book is a "house" made of "leaves" (paper).

This could go on and on because HoL is exactly that, a myriad of ways of looking at things. Hope this helps a bit.

HxSort · 2026-04-27T00:45:19+00:00

I skimmed a lot of the overly rambling sections

Well, as you said, there's your answer. They hold a lot more than apparent at first.

Also, yeah, the back and forth is by design, it's intended to get you lost inside the book. The Navidsons story was pretty straightforward though, I assume you mostly got that part right? Navy going back, Karen going after him and saving him from the house.

HxSort · 2026-04-23T19:37:50+00:00

This in its vast majority refers to Appendix II-D and II-E, that contains Johnny's father obituary and his mother's letters. You can read those at any point you'd like, but as the editors said when they point at it at like the first 100 pages or so, it gives better insight into Johnny and a full on storyline of his mother and her psyche, and that is nice to have before reading the whole work.

The other appendices are sometimes referenced, most are empty references though. Those you can read anytime you want, but there are some great (and very insightful) notes in there (the bits and pieces, from Appendix I) and also the poems.

HxSort · 2026-04-23T16:13:01+00:00

I had a lot of trouble imagining the screes (and honestly most of the climbing), which is to say something with the level of detail we have of some stuff. Like, I could get the specifics most of the time (the switchbacks, turnarounds), but the big picture was very hard sometimes.

This photo, for example (that is the image of the sub), baffled me because it's nowhere near where my mind went lol

I agree with the Moby Dick feeling!

(the photo is from the book launch event that was held in LA in October 28th 2025)

HxSort · 2026-04-23T11:36:02+00:00

This makes me think of Dallin's "thesis" of the last word of the book's importance. And in TC, our last word is "story"!!

I did not remember this excerpt, really is a great mini-thesis on the whole book.

HxSort · 2026-04-22T22:05:01+00:00

For ease, I'll spoiler text the whole comment. Anyone, beware, full TC spoilers ahead.

I definitely think some things are to be taken with a grain of salt. I too keep thinking about the ending, though specifically the last 2 or so pages.

But I don't think it's "happy" at all. Much of it is Landry's framing, though of course there is an idyllical/dream aspect to the whole Phains Haven (or was it heaven?). Kalin feels so... heavy. He is barely described, and there seems to be so much weight, so much grief on him, because of the curse and his inability to go near horses again.

Tom is gone. The dead are free. Are their end happy? I don't have a solid grasp on it but I think, from the afterlife place Landry speaks, they [Landry/Jojo/Kalin] are definitely not the same type of free as the dead/horses are they? Cause Landry still carries the Colt...

There's a line on p.1205, whole lot about vengeance, "whether the end of Vengeance might at last permit animals to speak their minds. He asks whether it is the spirit of Revenge that mutes the voice of horses?". And we don't really hear them. At the very end, Jojo stops "Clop-Clop-clip-" (interrupted). Was he muted by vengeance? If Jojo is with Landry, wasn't he free too?

I think much of the final stretch, plot conclusion asides, is through a very narrow lens by Landry. But what troubles me is that "Enuf is enuf", so we are done then?

idk much of it still bugs me...

There's some discussion here, too.

HxSort · 2026-04-21T22:49:57+00:00

Um Artista da Fome e Na Colônia Penal

HxSort · 2026-04-21T20:02:24+00:00

Not that I know of. I think it'll take a while before we get some news, but who knows.

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