I want to say something about reading that I think gets underemphasized: the way a book's form — its size, its typography, its physical organization — affects the experience of reading it. This is not just aesthetics. It's phenomenology.

House of Leaves by Danielewski could only be the book it is because of its physical organization. The nested footnotes, the colored text, the different typographic registers for different narrators — these are the argument, not decoration. Reading it as a text file would lose half the novel. The format is the content.

Most novels don't engage with their physical format this radically, but all novels use it. The chapter break is a breathing space. The white space between sections is a pause that affects rhythm. The size of the font affects reading pace. These are decisions and they shape the experience even when you don't notice them.