House of Leaves and Infinite Jest were both interesting and complex readings.  Infinite Jest was a more confusing read because of the lengthy sections of back and forth short dialogue that occurred between characters.  The sheer number of characters in the whole book is another part that becomes confusing after looking it up on Wikipedia I discovered that there are near 30 characters in all.  The writing however is quite excellent with particular attention to details and descriptions of the smallest details.  Wallace is quite wordy and I totally see him going off for pages and pages on tangents like the nuclear strike game only to come back to the same place in the story 50 pages later.  These tangents within the overall story seem to be the meta concept.
House of Leaves was a more interesting book in terms of the story or more accurately three stories that take place and also the format of the book.  Writing is a creative outlet but almost all books are the same.  Page after page of black and white text read from left to right top to bottom.  We have seen this departure from the norm in DJ Spook’s book where the entire book had a whole in the middle of it.  Every page had a rough and smooth side to it with one side having artwork and the other having the text.  Not every page had text in the same way and it created a more interesting and engaging read.  House of Leaves has gone even further from the norm with the extensive footnotes that can lead the read astray from the story for a while.  Danielewski also takes advantage of this to have some fun such as on page four where he has a note from the editors about Mr. Truant and how they talked on the phone but have never actually met.  The structure of the pages further engages the reader with secret codes that can be deciphered.  House of Leaves is the best example so far of the idea of information within information with the multiple stories going on. I’m having trouble fully understanding the concept and how to make a project of this and would be more lost not having been exposed to this reading.