#Jon Bickley | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bracketsoffear · 12 days ago

Text

Eye Leitner Reading List

The full list of submissions for the Eye Leitner bracket. Bold titles are ones which were accepted to appear in the bracket. Synopses and propaganda can be found below the cut. Be warned, however, that these may contain spoilers!

Auerbach, Dathan: Penpal

Baxter, Steven: The Light of Other Days Bentham, Jeremy: The Panopticon Writings Bickley, S.L.: Ieia Borges, Jorge Luis: El Aleph Borges, Jorge Luis: Funes The Memorious Borges, Jorge Luis: Shakespeare's Memory

Darnielle, John: Devil House de Vigan, Delphine: Kids Run the Show (Enfants sont Rois) Dick, Philip K.: Eye in the Sky DiLouie, Craig: Episode Thirteen

Fitzhugh, Louise: Harriet the Spy Foucault, Michel: Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

Hamilton, Peter F.: A Quantum Murder Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Scarlet Letter Herbert, James: Moon Hirsch, Alex: Journal 3 Hockensmith, Steve: Secret Santa Hugo, Victor: La Conscience

Kafka, Franz: The Trial King, Stephen: I Am the Doorway Korean Scribes: Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty

Makkai, Rebecca: I Have Some Questions For You Morrell, David: Orange is for Anguish Blue for Insanity

O’Connor, Flannery: Wise Blood Orwell, George: Nineteen Eighty-Four

Pelgrom, Els: Little Sophie and Lanky Flop Poe, Edgar Allan: The Imp of the Perverse Poe, Edgar Allan: The Tell-Tale Heart Pratchett, Terry: The Truth

Roth, Veronica: Poster Girl

Sanderson, Brandon: Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones Schweblin, Samanta: Kentukis (little eyes) Shadow, Nick: Blind Witness Shine, A.M.: The Watchers Silverstein, Shel: Tell Me Smith, Aza: Paranoia Retardant Snicket, Lemony: A Series of Unfortunate Events Sophocles: Oedipus Rex Stone, Jon: There's A Monster At the End of this Book

Tolkien, J.R.R.: The Lord of the Rings Tucker, Mike: Prime Time

Various: Yellow Pages, The Various: Yongle Encyclopedia, The

Auerbach, Dathan: Penpal

From Wikipedia: "Penpal is told via a series of non-linear recollections by an unnamed narrator trying to make sense of mysterious events that happened to him during his childhood, the truth of which have been kept from him by his mother all his life.

In kindergarten, the narrator befriends another boy named Josh. One day, their class conducts a penpal experiment, in which the children tie self-addressed letters to balloons and send them off. As the children receive responses, their teacher tracks how far their balloons went on a state map in the classroom. While most of the children get letters back, the narrator starts to believe his balloon got lost, until he receives an envelope containing a single poorly shot Polaroid photo. Over the school year, he receives over 50 other photographs, all without any letter. Soon after, he realizes that the pictures all contain himself and his mother, which prompts her to call the police.

The narrator recalls a series of disconnected events which, while innocuous to him as a child, take on sinister new meaning from an adult perspective: a neighborhood snow cone customer returning the same dollar bill to the narrator that he'd included in his initial penpal letter; hearing strange clicking noises while out playing with Josh which he later identified as camera flashes; finding a strange drawing in a pair of shorts he'd left by the riverside, depicting himself aside a much larger man; and the presumed murder of one of the narrator's elderly, Alzheimer's-stricken neighbors shortly after claiming her long-dead husband had returned home and was living with her again. One incident that particularly stands out in the narrator's memory is awakening in the woods one night and finding his way home to discover police looking for him; a letter was placed on his bed stating his intentions to run away, although his name was misspelled. Shortly after this incident, the narrator's mother discovers something in the house's crawlspace that prompts her to sell the home and move.

The narrator's cat, Boxes, later disappears, prompting the narrator and Josh to sneak back to the narrator's old house at night to look for him; there, they discover cat food and an adult man's clothing inside the crawlspace, as well as a collection of multiple Polaroids in the narrator's room. Pursued by an unseen individual, who takes his picture during the chase, Josh drops the walkie talkie he and the narrator had been using to keep in touch; later that night, the narrator hears Boxes' meows coming from his own walkie talkie.

Josh later attends the narrator's 12th birthday party but seems troubled and says he thinks he's been sleepwalking; the narrator notes that this was the last time he ever saw Josh.

Years later, the narrator – now a teenager – begins dating Josh's older sister Veronica, who is reluctant to talk about her brother. One night, while the two are on a date, Veronica is the victim of a hit and run in a parking lot, although the narrator does not see the vehicle. He still suspects the driver to be the person who followed him on the way to the date. While in the hospital, Veronica admits to the narrator that Josh has been missing for years after he disappeared one night, leaving a note on his pillow saying he was running away. During Veronica's recovery in the hospital, the pair texts regularly and their relationship intensifies, culminating in Veronica professing her love to the narrator. He later learns that Veronica has been dead for weeks and that her phone was never recovered after the narrator returned it to her following the accident.

Now an adult, the narrator confronts his long-estranged mother about these incidents. She confesses that shortly after Veronica's death, Josh's father – a construction worker – was offered cash by a man to fill a series of holes in his backyard. A month later, while landscaping the same property, Josh's father unearthed a coffin containing the bodies of Josh and a large, adult man holding him in his embrace. Josh's father identified the man as the same individual who'd paid him to fill the holes, and realized that he had abducted Josh and arranged for them to be buried alive together; the narrator's mother confesses that Josh was wearing a set of the narrator's missing clothes. The pair agreed to keep what had happened a secret, and Josh's father set fire to the man's corpse, refusing to allow his son to rest with his abductor in death.

The narrator reconciles with his mother, thanking her for revealing what happened. He does not understand why the penpal kidnapped Josh instead of him, but reasons that when the man couldn't follow through with his plan to kidnap the narrator, he instead focused his attention on Josh, as the two friends looked very much alike. Suffering from survivor's guilt, the narrator wishes he had never met Josh, and admits that he does not believe in an afterlife, and therefore does not think the penpal will ever face punishment for his crimes. The narrator concludes saying he loves Josh and cherishes all of the childhood memories he shares with him."

***

The book follows the first-person narrator as he realizes he was the focus of an obsessed stalker who tracks him throughout his childhood.

Baxter, Steven: The Light of Other Days

The book revolves around the invention of wormhole technology allowing the viewing of any place or time in the past or present. It then explores how society might change when everyone knows that not only could everyone else spy on them at any time, but so could any number of people in the distant future as well.

Bentham, Jeremy: The Panopticon Writings

The Panopticon project for a model prison obsessed the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham for almost 20 years. In the end, the project came to nothing; the Panopticon was never built. But it is precisely this that makes the Panopticon project the best exemplification of Bentham’s own theory of fictions, according to which non-existent fictitious entities can have all too real effects. There is probably no building that has stirred more philosophical controversy than Bentham’s Panopticon. The Panopticon is not merely, as Foucault thought, “a cruel, ingenious cage”, in which subjects collaborate in their own subjection, but much more—constructing the Panopticon produces not only a prison, but also a god within it. The Panopticon is a machine which on assembly is already inhabited by a ghost. It is through the Panopticon and the closely related theory of fictions that Bentham has made his greatest impact on modern thought; above all, on the theory of power. The Panopticon writings are frequently cited, rarely read. This edition contains the complete “Panopticon Letters”, together with selections from “Panopticon Postscript I” and “Fragment on Ontology”, Bentham’s fullest account of fictions. A comprehensive introduction by Miran Bozovic explores the place of Panopticon in contemporary theoretical debate.

Bickley, S.L.: Ieia

The title character is a goddess who has been cursed to inhabit a statue. In a mild twist on this trope, she sees through the eyes of anyone who is looking at the statue. When more than one person (or animal) is looking at her, the views overlap, and when no one is looking at her, she has no senses at all. She is forced to watch her priestess be assaulted and kidnapped, her statue stolen, knowing that she has the power to perform one more miracle -- but then she will die.

Borges, Jorge Luis: El Aleph

No propaganda

Borges, Jorge Luis: Funes The Memorious

The title character's absolute, perfect memory — the result of a head injury — is useless, since every sensation or minuscule change in an object registers as a separate memory, requiring a specific name, to the point of near-sensory overload. He recalls everything he sees but is unable to use any of it, or even to make sense of it -- just like the Eye itself.

Borges, Jorge Luis: Shakespeare's Memory

Hermann Sörgel is a Shakespeare scholar who was given the opportunity to receive William's Shakespeare's memory from a fellow scholar at a conference. He accepts, but he doesn't receive the memory all at once. It comes to him gradually: he sees faces he's never seen before in his dreams, hums songs he's never heard. After a month, he starts to believe he *is* Shakespeare. As soon as the realization hits him, the horrors of becoming Shakespeare hit Sörgel. He starts forgetting modern language, and his breaking point occurs when he becomes terrified of the cars on the road. He starts calling people at random to give Shakespeare's memory away -- it has to be given via verbal consent-- to anyone who answered until someone picked up. Even after the memory had left him, Hermann can't escape Shakespeare. Most of his other areas of study lead back to Shakespeare and some fleeting memories haven't quite escaped him.

Darnielle, John: Devil House

Gage Chandler is hired to write a book on the Devil House, a Southern Californian porn store-turned-cult clubhouse in which a grisly murder took place in the 80s. He’s a true crime writer who’s become disillusioned with the fanbase, with the final straw being a letter from the mother of one of the victims in his book The White Witch, which was adapted to film to middling success.

de Vigan, Delphine: Kids Run the Show (Enfants sont Rois)

The first time that Mélanie met Clara, Mélanie was stunned by Clara's sense of authority, and Clara was struck by Mélanie's pink, glittery nails, which shimmered in the dark. "She looks like a child," thought the first. "She looks like a doll," pondered the second. These two women, both of the same generation and exposed to the same media throughout their lives, could not be more different in adulthood. Mélanie is a social media superstar, broadcasting her children's daily lives on a family YouTube channel. Clara is a young police officer, assigned to the case after Mélanie's daughter Kimmy is abducted. Traversing the Big Brother generation, the social media influencer generation, and right up to the 2030s, Delphine de Vigan offers a bone-chilling exposé of a world where everything is broadcasted and profited from, even family happiness.

The book has all the eye terrors that stem from social media: hypervigilance, fear of the perception and opinion of others, the need to always peer into other lives and live vicariously through what others show through the web and so on. Kimmy's kidnapping (and later revealed suffering as child star) come from the overexposure caused by her mother, who during her disappearance struggles with gaze of her audience, and later the whole world.

Years after Kimmy's kidnapping she’s still suffering the consequences of her child star infancy, and so does her bigger brother, who, after upholding the influencer family business for more years after Kimmy's has cut ties with the family, has fallen into a extremely paranoid state in which he believes he’s being watched by an unknown organization. The siblings reunite after their estrangement, but it is revealed that what Kimmy thought to be an innocent butterfly is actually a hidden camera sent to spy upon them.

Melanie, their mother, runs her very own Big brother streaming, that eventually sends her into a mental breakdown, on which the book ends, after years of working being seen by millions.

Dick, Philip K.: Eye in the Sky

After an accident at the Belmont Bevatron, eight people are forced to travel through several different alternate universes. These ersatz universes are later revealed to be solipsistic manifestations of each individual's innermost fears and prejudices, akin to the domains of the Eyepocalypse with the various characters taking turns as the Pupil of the Eye, with their own inner thoughts and desires on display for all of the others to see.

DiLouie, Craig: Episode Thirteen

Fade to Black is the newest hit ghost hunting reality TV show. Led by husband and wife team Matt and Claire Kirklin, it delivers weekly hauntings investigated by a dedicated team of ghost hunting experts.

Episode Thirteen takes them to every ghost hunter's holy grail: the Paranormal Research Foundation. This brooding, derelict mansion holds secrets and clues about bizarre experiments that took place there in the 1970s. It's also famously haunted, and the team hopes their scientific techniques and high tech gear will prove it. But as the house begins to reveal itself to them, proof of an afterlife might not be everything Matt dreamed of. A story told in broken pieces, in tapes, journals, and correspondence, this is the story of Episode Thirteen—and how everything went terribly, horribly wrong.

Fitzhugh, Louise: Harriet the Spy

Harriet the Spy has a secret notebook that she fills with utterly honest jottings about her parents, her classmates, and her neighbors. Every day on her spy route she "observes" and notes down anything of interest to her, no matter how small, impolite, or utterly devastating. When her classmates get ahold of her notebook and discover Harriet's innermost thoughts about them, her life comes crashing down. Harriet becomes both the Watcher and the Watched, as her spying habits come under scrutiny from everyone around her.

Foucault, Michel: Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

The philosophical origin of the panopticon and eventually the surveillance state.

Hamilton, Peter F.: A Quantum Murder

The victim is a scientist who was working on neurohormones that could be used to see through time, so the investigators use a sample he's left behind to do so. They see him being killed by one of his own students who has gone insane, but it's later revealed that the murderer was brainwashed to do so by the real culprit, who was worried that the neurohormone could be used to see a murder he had committed eleven years previously.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Scarlet Letter

The mark of the scarlet 'A' ensures that all who look at Hester Prynne can know her and judge her for her sin of adultery.

Herbert, James: Moon

Three years after horrific visions helped him lead the police to catch a serial killer, divorced computer technician Jonathan Childes, shelters from the public’s morbid curiosity on one of the Channel Islands. On an ocean swim with French teacher Amy Sebire, Childes is suddenly overwhelmed by a distant vision of a corpse’s evisceration. During a dinner party with Amy’s family, a vision of the exhumation of a small boy’s corpse causes Childes to collapse. While Amy’s father Paul Sebire is suspicious of Childes’s past police involvement, Amy protests that Childes helped solve the murders. While she urges Childes to seek some kind of help, he’s petrified that this may somehow advantage whatever depraved mind has reached his own. A vision of an elderly psychiatric patient's cranial mutilation persuades Childes to call Detective Inspector Overoy, aided three years ago by Childes's visions. Investigation of the subsequently burnt psychiatric hospital reveals a small boy’s exhumed corpse, and an eviscerated prostitute indicates a killer who removes organs, partially eats them, and leaves a moonstone in each corpse. What’s more, the killer has sensed Childes’s distant observation. A sudden overwhelming fear for his seven-year-old daughter Gabby’s safety heralds the killer’s aim to have some sadistic fun…

Hirsch, Alex: Journal 3

Ford Pines travels to Gravity Falls, becomes obsessed with unraveling its paranormal mysteries, makes a deal with an all-seeing demon to achieve his dreams only to discover he's been duped, and descends into violent paranoia about being watched and keeping secrets.

Hockensmith, Steve: Secret Santa

From the short story collection *Naughty: Nine Tales of Christmas Crime*. After a Secret Santa exchange, sleazy office drone Bigelow starts getting embarrassing presents from someone who knows his dark secrets, causing him to self-destruct as he tries to find out which of his coworkers is responsible.

Hugo, Victor: La Conscience

In this poem, an eye stalks Cain wherever he goes after he commits his famous biblical fratricide. At the end, he digs a grave for himself, goes to live in it, and the eye is still there. The last line - "L'œil était dans la tombe et regardait Caïn" ("The eye was in the grave and looking at Cain") - is proverbial in French.

Kafka, Franz: The Trial

The Trial (original German title: Der Process) is a novel written by Franz Kafka from 1914 to 1915 and published in 1925. One of his best-known works, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader.

King, Stephen: I Am the Doorway

After being exposed to an alien mutagen on a space trip to Venus, a disabled former astronaut describes the frightening changes he goes through. The narrator, Arthur, begins the narrative with his hands bandaged and complains of horrible itching both before and after the expedition. The transformation manifests as a swarm of tiny eyeballs on his fingertips. These eyes serve as the titular "doorway" for an extraterrestrial civilization, allowing them to peer into our world, but from an alien perspective, humans are hideous monstrosities that they fear and despise, according to Arthur.

Soon, the alien presence is able to not only peer through this portal, but also to take control of Arthur's shattered body and use him to perform heinous atrocities. Arthur douses his hands in kerosene and sets them on fire in a frantic bid to retain his humanity, only to discover that once the gateway is opened, it cannot be simply closed. For over seven years, he is able to keep the extraterrestrial presence at bay. However, as the aliens' eyes emerge on Arthur's chest, he announces that he intends to commit suicide with a shotgun to stop them from killing anyone else.

Korean Scribes: Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty

The Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty (Korean: 조선왕조실록 (South Korea) and 조선봉건왕조실록 (North Korea)) are the annual records of Joseon, the last royal house to rule Korea. Kept from 1392 to 1865, the annals (or sillok) comprise 1,893 volumes and are thought to be the longest continual documentation of a single dynasty in the world. With the exception of two sillok compiled during the colonial era, they are the 151st national treasure of South Korea and listed in UNESCO's Memory of the World registry. The texts are also known as the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty or the True Record of the Joseon Dynasty. They contain every event of note which occurred in the court, no matter how disturbing, unpleasant, or downright embarrassing. Some examples: -One recorder hid behind a screen, so he could secretly record people complaining about the secret recorder. -King Taejong fell from a horse and immediately told those around him not to let a recorder know about it. Both the fall and his request were promptly recorded. -On multiple occasions, imperial officials led purges of scribes and academics based on what they read of themselves in the Records. This led to access to the records being strictly monitored and controlled.

Makkai, Rebecca: I Have Some Questions For You

The whole book deals with truth, secrets, and the fact that uncovering these things doesn’t tell you what to do with the information, which is very Eye. The plot revolves around a murder that happened when the protagonist was in school. It is in first person but with frequent addresses to “you,” who we eventually realise is one of the other characters, and positions the reader as both observer and observed. A Leitner version might start addressing these asides to the reader, revealing their own indiscretions and crimes. Further, each section of the book starts with a segment where the question is asked, “If X person had done it, how would it have happened?” A Leitner version might morph to show the reader descriptions of how they themself would commit similar crimes, leading to confusion about whether they did or not, or in the wrong (right) hands, a handbook for how to commit a perfect murder.

Morrell, David: Orange is for Anguish Blue for Insanity

"A guy watches as his friend Myers becomes obsessed with a famous painter van Dorn. He is certain the paintings hide some sort of a mystery, and is determined to uncover it. Myers departs to France, to live in a little village where van Dorn experienced the awakening of his talent, hoping that repeating his daily routine will provide some clues. A little later the protagonist receives a telegram beckoning him to France: Myers, as all of the researchers before him, gouged out his eyes. Myers dies before the protagonist arrives to the village, in the same hospital and of the same wound as van Dorn. intrigued by the mystery, the protagonist stays there to uncover the secrets of this place. This story is driven by characters' desire to uncover the truth, even as their friends and well-meaning villagers beg them to let the secret stay hidden, even as they realise they are destroying themselves - curiosity is stronger than their sense of safety."

The protagonist manages to find a valley where a meteorite a passage to hell, and if you get too close a damned soul will burrow itself into your eyes and brain. It is unbearably painful and changes your vision as you start seeing damned souls crawling over everything in sight. This was a secret of van Dorns paintings - if you focused your eyes just right, you could see these demons in every inch of peaceful landscapes that gave van Dorn his fame. Tortured by migraines, the protagonist resists the urge to gouge his eyes out and paints, because depicting what he sees is the only thing able to alleviate the pain.

O’Connor, Flannery: Wise Blood

Hazel Motes, a World War II veteran long struggling with his faith, goes down to Taulkinham after finding his homestead abandoned. There he meets a “blind” preacher named Asa Hawks (with scars on his face from an attempt to blind himself with lime), and in defiance, founds an anti-religious church. Tagging along with Haze is Enoch Emery, who has “wise blood,” an uncanny sense of significance.

Overall, the novel unpacks the human desire for meaning thru religion, and the associated appointment of being watched, by a God tailing your sins and your audience searching for a prophet.

Orwell, George: Nineteen Eighty-Four

In 1984, civilisation has been ravaged by world war, civil conflict, and revolution. Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain) is a province of Oceania, one of the three totalitarian super-states that rule the world. It is ruled by "The Party" under the ideology of "Ingsoc" (a Newspeak shortening of "English Socialism") and the mysterious leader Big Brother, who has an intense cult of personality. The Party brutally purges out anyone who does not fully conform to their regime, using the Thought Police and constant surveillance through telescreens (two-way televisions), cameras, and hidden microphones. Those who fall out of favour with the Party become "unpersons", disappearing with all evidence of their existence destroyed.

In London, Winston Smith is a member of the Outer Party, working at the Ministry of Truth, where he rewrites historical records to conform to the state's ever-changing version of history. Winston revises past editions of The Times, while the original documents are destroyed after being dropped into ducts known as memory holes, which lead to an immense furnace. He secretly opposes the Party's rule and dreams of rebellion, despite knowing that he is already a "thought-criminal" and is likely to be caught one day.

While in a prole neighbourhood he meets Mr. Charrington, the owner of an antiques shop, and buys a diary where he writes criticisms of the Party and Big Brother. To his dismay, when he visits a prole quarter he discovers they have no political consciousness. As he works in the Ministry of Truth, he observes Julia, a young woman maintaining the novel-writing machines at the ministry, whom Winston suspects of being a spy, and develops an intense hatred of her. He vaguely suspects that his superior, Inner Party official O'Brien, is part of an enigmatic underground resistance movement known as the Brotherhood, formed by Big Brother's reviled political rival Emmanuel Goldstein.

One day, Julia secretly hands Winston a love note, and the two begin a secret affair. Julia explains that she also loathes the Party, but Winston observes that she is politically apathetic and uninterested in overthrowing the regime. Initially meeting in the country, they later meet in a rented room above Mr. Charrington's shop. During the affair, Winston remembers the disappearance of his family during the civil war of the 1950s and his tense relationship with his estranged wife Katharine. Weeks later, O'Brien invites Winston to his flat, where he introduces himself as a member of the Brotherhood and sends Winston a copy of The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Goldstein. Meanwhile, during the nation's Hate Week, Oceania's enemy suddenly changes from Eurasia to Eastasia, which goes mostly unnoticed. Winston is recalled to the Ministry to help make the necessary revisions to the records. Winston and Julia read parts of Goldstein's book, which explains how the Party maintains power, the true meanings of its slogans, and the concept of perpetual war. It argues that the Party can be overthrown if proles rise up against it. However, Winston never gets the opportunity to read the chapter that explains why the Party took power and is motivated to maintain it.

Winston and Julia are captured when Mr. Charrington is revealed to be an undercover Thought Police agent, and they are separated and imprisoned at the Ministry of Love. O'Brien also reveals himself to be a member of the Thought Police and a member of a false flag operation which catches political dissidents of the Party. Over several months, Winston is starved and relentlessly tortured to bring his beliefs in line with the Party. O'Brien tells Winston that he will never know whether the Brotherhood actually exists and that Goldstein's book was written collaboratively by him and other Party members; furthermore, O'Brien reveals to Winston that the Party sees power not as a means but as an end, and the ultimate purpose of the Party is seeking power entirely for its own sake. For the final stage of re-education, O'Brien takes Winston to Room 101, which contains each prisoner's worst fear. When confronted with rats, Winston denounces Julia and pledges allegiance to the Party.

Winston is released into public life and continues to frequent the Chestnut Tree café. He encounters Julia, and both reveal that they have betrayed the other and are no longer in love. Back in the café, a news alert celebrates Oceania's supposed massive victory over Eurasian armies in Africa. Winston finally accepts that he loves Big Brother.

***

Big Brother is Watching You.

Pelgrom, Els: Little Sophie and Lanky Flop

Sophie is a curious young girl. She's heavily implied to be dying of cancer, and spends her days in bed, bored out of her mind. One night, her cat Terror and her dolls (Lanky Flop, Mr. Bear, and Arabella, among others) come alive in front of her eyes to stage a theatre play. Sophie is excited at the idea, and begs for a chance to join in. The cat and the dolls are reluctant — but they decide to let her be part of the play, if she's so keen on finding out what's "for sale in life". Before she knows it, Sophie is drawn into the world of Terror's story, which suddenly seems frighteningly real and pulls absolutely no punches. Sophie is quickly shown extreme poverty, death, sex, betrayal and decadence — everything life is all about.

Poe, Edgar Allan: The Imp of the Perverse

A tale about the terrible self-destructive impulse inside us all, the need to do awful things just to see what will happen. In particular, it concerns a man who, years after committing murder, becomes obsessed with the idea of confessing, until he begins to uncontrollably tell his tale to anyone that will listen, leading to his speedy arrest.

Poe, Edgar Allan: The Tell-Tale Heart

No Propaganda

Pratchett, Terry: The Truth

Ankh-Morpork's first newspaper falls into a tangled web of conspiracy.

Roth, Veronica: Poster Girl

However, Poster Girl offers a unique perspective flip on the dystopian future America setting, focusing on the dystopian regime (known as the Delegation) after it has been overthrown by a revolution and replaced by an entity known as the Triumvirate. Furthermore, the book's protagonist, Sonya Kantor, initially factors into the story not as a brave rebel but as the titular "Poster Girl" for the Delegation, having been chosen as the face for its latest batch of propaganda posters before the Revolution took place.

Obviously there are elements of the Eye in how society views her -- fame and the 'public eye', etc., it is also notable that under the Delegation every citizen was constantly monitored via their Insight Eye implants. While the Triumvirate has banned the practice, Delegation loyalists still have theirs installed as a way to allow the current ruling class to keep watch on the overthrown regime.

Sanderson, Brandon: Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones

The Alcatraz series is broadly concerned with seeing and knowing, with the main form of conflict stemming from the evil librarian conspiracy to hide the knowledge and magic of the world from the 'Hushlands', and the main form of magic (aside from the Smedry Talents) comes from the use of specially crafted glass lenses. This book in particular takes place in the lost Library of Alexandria, an underground ruin containing all the knowledge in the world, haunted by the spectral wraiths of librarians. Anyone is free to enter and borrow a book -- but at the cost of their soul being trapped forever in the stacks, doomed to staff the lost library.

Schweblin, Samanta: Kentukis (little eyes)

They've infiltrated homes in Hong Kong, shops in Vancouver, the streets of in Sierra Leone, town squares in Oaxaca, schools in Tel Aviv, bedrooms in Indiana. They're everywhere. They're here. They're us. They're not pets, or ghosts, or robots. They're real people, but how can a person living in Berlin walk freely through the living room of someone in Sydney? How can someone in Bangkok have breakfast with your children in Buenos Aires, without your knowing? Especially when these people are completely anonymous, unknown, unfindable.

The characters in Samanta Schweblin's brilliant new novel, Little Eyes, reveal the beauty of connection between far-flung souls—but yet they also expose the ugly side of our increasingly linked world. Trusting strangers can lead to unexpected love, playful encounters, and marvelous adventure, but what happens when it can also pave the way for unimaginable terror? This is a story that is already happening; it's familiar and unsettling because it's our present and we're living it, we just don't know it yet. In this prophecy of a story, Schweblin creates a dark and complex world that's somehow so sensible, so recognizable, that once it's entered, no one can ever leave.

Shadow, Nick: Blind Witness

Liam was recently blinded in a terrible accident. Fortunately, his father has made sure that he can receive an eye transplant. Less fortunately, these eyes are from a murdered man. Very unfortunately, that man is out for revenge.

Spoilers: Liam begins having visions of his eye donor's life and death. In the final one, he discovers that the man was beaten to death by Liam's father, a notorious mobster. Liam dies experiencing the dead man's murder at his father's hands.

Shine, A.M.: The Watchers

You can't see them. But they can see you.

This forest isn't charted on any map. Every car breaks down at its treeline. Mina's is no different. Left stranded, she is forced into the dark woodland only to find a woman shouting, urging Mina to run to a concrete bunker. As the door slams behind her, the building is besieged by screams.

Mina finds herself in a room with a wall of glass, and an electric light that activates at nightfall, when the Watchers come above ground. These creatures emerge to observe their captive humans and terrible things happen to anyone who doesn't reach the bunker in time.

Afraid and trapped among strangers, Mina is desperate for answers. Who are the Watchers, and why are they keeping the humans imprisoned, keen to watch their every move?

Silverstein, Shel: Tell Me

“TELL ME Tell me I'm clever, Tell me I'm kind, Tell me I'm talented, Tell me I'm cute, Tell me I'm sensitive, Graceful and wise, Tell me I'm perfect- But tell me the truth.“

Smith, Aza: Paranoia Retardant

The story of Agents Saturday and Sunday who, after spying on a civilian for months at a time, butt heads over the fact that they have no real evidence to justify their excessive espionage. Link: https://flashfictionmagazine.com/blog/2024/03/23/paranoia-retardant-2/

"We've wasted department funds on three apartments in the building and over eighty bugs. We've bugged all of her lamps, her makeup, her shampoo bottle, her pillows, her wallet, her cell phone, the back of her fridge, every vending machine in the car dealership she works at, and we even had to bribe her dentist to install one in one of her teeth."

Snicket, Lemony: A Series of Unfortunate Events

It's all about seeing and knowing, while leaving yourself unseen and unknown. The eye motif pops up regularly throughout the series.

Sophocles: Oedipus Rex

The terrible knowledge that he has murdered his father and married his mother drives Oedipus to stab out his eyes rather than continue to see and know.

Stone, Jon: There's A Monster At the End of this Book

Pretty self-explanatory plot, right? You know from the start that there will be a monster at the end of this book, but you also know that Grover is scared of monsters; he progressively gets more desperate and more frantic as he tries in vain to stop you from turning the page. This book, like the episodes themselves, makes the reader complicit in the action of turning to the next page, thus creating a sense of mounting dread as the end of the book draws nearer. What is going to happen? What is the monster that lovable Grover is so afraid of? Curiosity is a dangerous thing...

Tolkien, J.R.R.: The Lord of the Rings

Sauron! To quote Saruman: "His gaze pierces cloud, shadow, earth, and flesh. You know of what I speak, Gandalf: a great Eye, lidless, wreathed in flame." Unlike in the movies, it's not made clear that Sauron is simply embodied as one big eye, but the Eye does manifest as described at least in the Mirror of Galadriel, and about the only thing seen of Sauron in his tower is his gaze, like an evil searchlight.

Tucker, Mike: Prime Time

Synopsis: "Coming up after the break, the start of a new series of programmes featuring the mysterious traveller in Time and Space known only as — the Doctor.

Detecting a mysterious sub-space signal in the Time Vortex, the Doctor and Ace land on the planet Blinni-Gaar. They soon discover that the native population are little more than zombies, addicted to the programmes of the dangerously powerful Channel 400. As the Doctor investigates, he finds that the television company has a sinister agenda that has nothing to do with entertainment.

Why is the Director-General of Channel 400 so interested in the Doctor? Who are the mysterious aliens who watch from the shadows of the Brago nebula? And why is a pack of Zzinbriizi jackals stalking the streets of Blinni-Gaar?

As the Doctor is drawn deeper and deeper into a web of intrigue and deceit he discovers that he has an unexpected ally — of the most dangerous kind."

Why it's Eye: TV has consumed the population of the planet with a desire to watch and witness. One of the most disturbing scenes in the book is Ace's 'interview', where the host paints her in the worst light possible, reads out a list of her crimes and misdeeds, and even shows her a picture of her own grave. All the while, the live studio audience boos and jeers at her, further fueling the terror of being known and judged.

Various: Yellow Pages, The

Its a book of all the phone numbers.

Various: Yongle Encyclopedia, The

It is the largest printed encyclopedia in the world, originally composed of 11095 volumes, of which 400 survive. it was intended to include every commentary that had been written on the Chinese classics, as well as all history, philosophy, arts and sciences.

#leitner tournament #reading list #eye poll

4 notes · View notes