#186 Mon (12/26/22) - The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

 Started reading The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall. I hadn't meant to, but was looking at books similar to House of Leaves, downloaded this one and was immediately hooked.  It reminds me of Neverwhere to be honest, I guess because British, but a very intriguing and clever idea. Feels like a Tom McCarthy novel, like Remainder, or even an early Alex Garland (Coma). Auster and Fight Club could also be references.  Jaws is obviously a big part of this.

It was also mentioned when I was searching for material on S. by J.J.Abrams (aka The Ship of Theseus by V.M.Straka).  I guess because it has an unorthodox typography, but really it is just illustrated with images made up of letters. Strangely, there are scans of the S. book available (and also an audiobook) but they are 200+ MB, so I was reluctant to download.

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Finished it in 2 days and it was a compelling and enjoyable read. So in the end I would say it is not actually like House of Leaves, in the sense that the text and typography never really became an intricate part of the story itself.  The story is about texts, but does not do the 'play with text' (really typography) that HoL does.

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