Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let me start by saying that I love a challenging read, in fact, in the best case scenarios, the more challenging the better. I love authors who not only assume their readers have brains, but expect them to use them. However, this book was definitely NOT the best case scenario. I'm aware that many reviewers here are "Wish I could give it MORE than 5 stars!" crazy about this book, which is partly why I gave it more than one try. But I simply got tired of Danielewski's smug tone and gimmicks such as forcing the reader to literally turn the book upside down to read (what I assumed were supposed to be) post-it notes tacked over pages, sometimes written in languages I didn't even recognize. I was downright exasperated when I found out that the point of an incredibly long list of names that filled the margins of a few pages was that you could find the author's name spelled out among the initials of those names. My question: Why is finding the author's name buried in a tediously long list supposed to be important to me? How is this challenging my imagination or giving me any sort of pleasure. My answer: It's the author himself who is getting pleasure out of this mind-boggling instance of self-indulgence. And I suppose readers who go to the trouble of mining out the author's name will get some sort of kick out of feeling clever and "in on it"...? I really don't know. I apologize to the readers who honestly enjoyed and benefited from this book. But it's hard not to read a lot of the excessive praise without wondering how many enthusiasts simply feel hipper-than-thou for claiming it as an all-time favorite. The words that kept coming to my mind when reading the book and thinking about the author were "pseudo intellectual attention hound" and - I hate to say it - "fraud."