Or just check out the book online

My Description of what Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves is about after reading 55 ½ pages and the cover flap

Hi, friends,

Generally, what you will be reading is a documentary written by a man known only as Zampano'. His written, very formal documentary [embodied by footnotes and scholarly dissertations as broad in scope as word origin and word comparison breakdowns, to physics formulas that yield the speed of sound, to quotes from Wordsworth and Ovid (mythology)] reveals everything mankind knows about an ambitious and professionally coordinated video documentary entitled The Navidson Record filmed by Pulitzer-Prize winning photojournalist Will Navidson.
We discover from The Navidson Record that Will and his wife and two kids have moved to the country to settle down and strengthen their inter-familial relationships. They appear in an early 18th century house where Navidson hoped to create a peaceful outpost. Fatefully, he wasn’t quite ready to relinquish the ‘lenses’ through which he had been viewing life since his tragic childhood. Therefore, in retrospect, (for those who have viewed the film, not you) it is not surprising that he designed this very project, which after dreadful, uncanny and deadly events, became known as The Navidson Record.

Innocently enough (at least consciously), to capture his family’s every action on tape, Navidson installed motion detecting cameras (the presence of which were known to his family). Intruding though this may seem, Navidson’s intentions were to portray how a family moves in, occupies and settles down in a new house. Eventually, however, the cameras caught (or is it didn’t catch) something else (something else is, paradoxically, a thorough description). A small, diverse group was lucky enough to view a copy of this project, and, as a result of the rapidly improving nature of digital imaging technology, are divided as to whether they believe that The Navidson Record is an elaborate illusory hoax or that the unbelievable really took place on Ash Tree Lane. Zampano' covers the opposing evidence from all aspects and angles in his documentary, which you will be reading.

But hang on—The Navidson Record doesn’t even exist. This, according to Johnny Truant—apprentice tatoo artist (in other words: tatoo artist secretary)/genius—who is the soul responsible for finding Zampano’s ‘documentary’ [I’ll explain the quotes in a paragraph or two (you may take this in both possible ways)]. Furthermore, he says “a good portion” of Zampano’s footnotes cite fictitious works. So, what is going on?! This is confusing? Why would Zampano', a loner old man who, irrelevantly (for the purpose of my description here), turns out to be blind, write a documentary on a non-existent film? Well, this is what keeps you reading. The book is filled with dark undertones and omens, so maybe there’s been a cover up? Hmm? What do you think?…

Regardless, you have now been introduced to the ‘rest’ of what you will be reading. Johnny Truant will, in effect, become your guide/sympathizer during your time in this book. He constantly interjects throughout Zampano’s document via his own footnotes, which often resemble a diary of his life and how it changes as he reads the document. But also they serve as warnings.

Of course, if The Navidson Record never existed, then Zampano’s ‘documentary’ is little more than a brilliantly creative fiction. But when you think of a documentary you naturally suppose that it would be a clear, meticulously organized piece of work, perhaps found on a 3 ½ in. floppy disk or as neat, labeled stacks of typewriter paper in a roll-top desk. This is not what Johnny Truant found.

The only thing that Johnny Truant knew about Zampano was that he was the man who had just died, and in so doing, had relinquished his rights to the small apartment Johnny had decided on moving into.

3:00 AM. Phone Rings.

Who the fuck is that?

Johnny hears his friend Lude’s voice. Lude is always up for parties, girls and drugs. Is this the motivation behind the call? No.

Johnny finds himself at Zampano’s apartment complex climbing stairs to his future room. Lude wanted to show Johnny something about this old dead man’s place. When you think of a death scene you naturally suppose that it would be bloody, or gruesome or nothing of the sort at all if the death was of natural causes. This is not what Johnny Truant found.

What Truant found was a dead blind man, some obsessively insane notes written on scraps of anything and everything and a claw mark gouge in the floor of an airtight, light restricted, choking, cloying, threatening, imminent, now!, watch out, look behind you and scream while gargling on your very own blood, apartment. Johnny Truant is warned not to read Zampano’s work. He is warned by Zampano’s written words and by something else—maybe that feeling of despair in the apartment. But that feeling faded and Truant ignored Zampano’s words. You are warned. You are warned by Zampano' and by Truant. You are warned: “This is not for you.” the sole words on page two of the book. You are unsettled by the appearance of German words on page three: “Muss es sein?” (Must it be?). But you’ll jump in anyway. Just remember that what you read is no more than that. There is absolutely nothing else there. Beware…

The house would generally be considered the main subject of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, but Zampano's intellectual meanderings and sentimental inclusions of lengthy dialogue between Will Navidson and his wife Karen, along with interruptions by Johnny Truant’s diary-style footnotes, suggest a different subject: How human beings react when that black darkness of vacant nothingness abandoned even of echos surrounds you like wormless dirt packs in a coffin. “You’ll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all. For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You’ll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse you’ll realize its always been shifting” “Old shelters—television, magazines, movies—wont protect you anymore.” “Then no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant or on some desolate street or even in the comforts of your own home, you’ll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by…And then for better or worse you’ll turn, unable to resist, though try to resist you still will, fighting with everything you’ve got not to face the thing you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has always come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name.
And then the nightmares will begin."

--Johnny Truant, Hollywood, CA

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all quotes from House of Leaves by the above author, you know