One of my favorite books in the whole wide world is Mark Danielewski's House Of Leaves. I seem to recall writing about this book in the past (A quick Google search agrees with my memory). Sean didn't agree with my assessment (or at least not during his half-hearted attempt to finish the thing) due in part to the format (heavily digressive. Think that might be part of why I like it?).

There's a lot of things to like about that book (my second favorite line from horror fiction is found in this book "And that's when Karen began to scream" [second only to Matheson's "I am legend." from the similarly named novella and recent blockbuster movie]). One of the things to like about it is the way that Danielewski presents the horror of the house through the cold (shall I say, chilling?) authorship of Zampano. It's very well done, and also showcases Danielewski's scholarship - he's clearly a really intelligent guy who knows a bunch of stuff about a bunch of stuff.

I'm not really one for reading scholarly articles about things (I really go more for space opera, and the occassional graphic novel of Batman fighting Superman, kind of thing). So the essay Zampano writes about Navidson's skill at photography (in regards to a particular [fictional] picture which ostensibly won Navidson a Pulitzer) was literally the first time I've ever read any sort of exposition of why a particular photograph was better than any other photograph. It really kind of opened my eyes to the concept of photography as art, and why it isn't just snapping a picture at the right place at the right time.

Mind you, I haven't really done all that much with that information, or done any sort of follow up on that very interesting field of thought. Not up until about 15 minutes ago, when I ran across this link, discussing two pictures from the photographer Platon. Thought it was interesting, and thought you might be interested in reading it as well. Particularly you, XmasGorilla (in case you read my blog).