We recently "incensed" John Brownlee of Table of Malcontents with our simplistic instructions for reading House of Leaves. He responded with the passion of a book lover and a description of the novel's layout, including a page scan. If you honestly need help approaching the book, see his post. We remain resolute in our position that if you can't figure out how read it without an explanation, you will have problems understanding it. Instead, might we suggest something in either a James Patterson or Sidney Sheldon?

Smooches to Ed Champion for defending us.

Let's see whose query we won't answer properly today.

Search String: book report on charlie and the chocolate factory

Do your own homework, kid.

Search String: comments about "If on a winters night a traveler"

Considering that the Book Mistress didn't make it past the first chapter of Italo Calvino's novel, which is written in the second person, before casting it aside and telling it to shut up, we have no comment.

Search String: what did brother francis eat AND "canticle for leibowitz"

Is this important to the plot of the above by Walter M. Miller, Jr.? Why would anyone need to know this? Is this a question from some kind of fact-based assignment in which a teacher naively expects to discover whether or not you did your reading? Or are you working on cookbook targeted to nomadic priests in the post-apocalyptic future?

Our wonderings aside, the best way to find out is to either actually read the book or try Google Book Search, but we'll tell you what he didn't eat:

"Yesterday. There was this lizard, Father. It had blue and yellow stripes, and such magnificent hams—thick as your thumb and plump, and I kept thinking how it would taste like chicken, roasted all brown and crisp outside, and—"

"All right," the priest interrupted. Only a hint of revulsion crossed his aged face. After all, the boy was spending a lot of time in the sun. "You took pleasure in these thoughts? You didn't try to get rid of the temptation?"

Francis reddened. "I—I tried to catch it. It got away (pp. 33-34)."

Search String: WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN A PERSON LIES ALOT

It means that person is a liar. Next?

You sought answers. BookBlog responds to your desperate pleas.

Search String: is the movie Shopgirl Steve Martin's autobiography

No. The movie Shopgirl is based on a novella (i.e. short novel) of the same name and is Steve Martin's first published work of fiction. It is about a lonely young woman who sells gloves in Neiman's. Unless Martin was once a girl behind a counter in a department store, odds are it isn't his autobiography.

Search String: what are the points of view in reading

There are many. A story can be told from the point of view of the main character, an objective observer, an unreliable narrator, multiple narrators, a third-person omniscient, etc. The best way to figure out point of view for a particular book is to read it. Your job, as a reader, is to understand and interpret what you read, which includes identifying point of view. For example, this paragraph is written from the point of view of the Book Mistress. Now, don't you feel smart?

Search String: how to read "house of leaves"

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski may seem like a daunting read but can be easily conquered by following these steps. Begin at the beginning. Follow the pages sequentially. When you come to a footnote, read the footnote then return to where you left off in the text. If you are directed to an appendix, read the appendix then return to where you left off in the text. You are finished when you reach the end.

Search String: running with scissors fact or fiction

Augusten Burroughs's Running with Scissors is a memoir, a genre that is not held to the same rigorous factual standards as a biography or autobiography. Some of it may be true, some of it may be based on what the author remembers as being true. Often, memoirists use will impression, interpretation, and fictionalization to tell their stories, so memoirs should be read with the foreknowledge that not everything may be completely accurate. Burroughs has asserted that his memoir is factual, but the Turcottes (portrayed in the book as the Finches) disagree. They have filed a lawsuit.

Search String: my name is oliver. i m a 33 year-old living in toronto canada. i have many interests but i ll list a few; i love to read watch movies listen to music and write. i m an author with a passion for writing so i spend much of my time doing that. i m a huge tennis fan...so i usually spend much of my time watching the grand slams.i m interesed in communicating with guys from all over the world. i consider myself to be a friendly honest guy and look for the the same. i am single and i live alone but much of my time is spent around family and friends

Dude, the Book Mistress can't help you.

Everyone with a blog and a counter looks at their stats. Everyone. Some people may be too cool to care about hits or visitors, but they still look.

I obsess over our search string referrals from engines like Google or Yahoo. Hardly any are for porn and they're also not very weird. Not surprisingly, most visitors land on us while looking for information about books. A thing I think we do well, besides discuss books, is provide meaningful and ongoing coverage of a select catalog of titles.

Many of the queries we receive are easily answered by reading through our discussions. It is unfortunate when some people leave without the information they seek. In this post, I will try to help the helpless by responding to our most common unanswered search strings.

Search String: the five people you meet in heaven narrator

Today alone, we received more than 30 similarly worded searches for the above. I don't know if there was a Five People scavenger hunt going on or if a single person was in denial over not finding a satisfactory answer, but that's a lot of hits for an easy one. The book is written in the third person; there is no narrator. If your American lit instructor absolutely demands an answer, say it's the author, Mitch Albom.

Search Strings: coraline spark notes and coraline cliff notes

Neither exist because Neil Gaiman's Coraline is a children's book that anyone over the age of 12 could probably finish in a few hours. Sucks having to do your own work, doesn't it?

Search String: What Is the Point of Reading?

The point of reading is to get some point (or meaning) from what you read. If you don't get my meaning from reading the last sentence, then there is no point. Go watch TV.