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bracketsoffear · 10 days ago

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Other Leitner Reading List

The full list of submissions for the Unaffiliated 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!

Allende, Isabel: Ripper

Beauregard, Aron: Playground Borges, Jorge Luis: Averroës's Search Borges, Jorge Luis: El Aleph Bosch, Pseudonymous: The Secret Series Breed-Wrisley, Kira and Scott Cawthon: Five Nights At Freddy's: The Silver Eyes Bulgakov, Mikhail: The Master and Margarita Burroughs, William S.: Naked Lunch Byng, Georgia: Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism

Carroll, Lewis: The Hunting of the Snark

Denning, G.S.: Warlock Holmes DeTerlizzi, Tony: The Search for WondLa

El-Mohtar, Amal and Max Gladstone: This Is How You Lose the Time War

Fforde, Jasper: Thursday Next series

Gaiman, Neil & Terry Pratchett: Good Omens Grahame-Smith, Seth: How to Survive a Horror Movie: All the Skills to Dodge the Kills Grimm, Brothers: Grimm's Fairy Tales

Holt, Tom: Doughnut Hussie, Andrew: Homestuck

Johnson, Jeremy Robert: We Live Inside You

Langlois, Amelie C.: The Sister Verse Series Lewis, C.S.: The Silver Chair Lovecraft, H.P.: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath Lubar, David: Weenies series Lyons, Steve: The Crooked World

Nash, Ogden: A Tale of the 13th Floor

Osman, Richard: The Thursday Murder Club

Pinkwater, Daniel: Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars Pirinçci, Akif: Felidae

Rix, Jamie: Grizzly Tales For Gruesome Kids

Scieszka, Jon: The Stinky Cheese Man Shannon, David: No, David! Sims, Jonathan: Thirteen Storeys Skipp, John: Don't Push the Button Stine, R.L.: Goosebumps

Theis, Jim: The Eye of Argon Tokuda-Hall, Maggie: The Mermaid The Witch and The Sea Traditional (German): Der Struwwelpeter Trumbo, Dalton: Johnny Got His Gun

Van Allsburg, Chris: The Mysteries of Harris Burdick Vasquez, Jhonen: Squee's Wonderful Big Giant Book of Unspeakable Horrors

Allende, Isabel: Ripper

Seventeen-year-old Amanda Martin is fascinated by crime. She is currently obsessed with a game called "Ripper" which she plays online with players from around the world. With the assistance of her beloved grandfather, she guides the group (Sherlock, Esmeralda, Colonel Paddington, and Abatha) in their objective of solve crimes inspired by those of Jack the Ripper. When a series of grisly murders starts taking place in the San Francisco area where she leaves, she is fascinated by then and finds herself steering the group toward solving these real life murders.

But the game stops being fun when her mother, free-spirited Indiana Jackson, goes missing.

Beauregard, Aron: Playground

Three low-income families have been given a handsome retainer to join Geraldine Borden for a day at her cliffside estate. All the parents must do to collect the rest of their money is allow their children to test out the revolutionary playground equipment Geraldine has been working on for decades. But there’s a reason the structures in the bowels of her gothic castle have taken so long to develop—they were never meant to see the light of day.

When a band of dysfunctional children is suddenly thrust into a diabolical realm of violence, they must grow up instantly to have a chance at survival. Will they find a way to put their differences aside, or be swallowed up by the insidious architecture all around them?

Borges, Jorge Luis: Averroës's Search

The story very much reminds me of the domain in MAG183: Monument. "The story imagines the difficulty of Averroës, the famed Islamic philosopher and translator, in translating Aristotle's Poetics because he was not able to understand what a play was, owing to the absence of live theatrical performances from Averroës' cultural milieu, in contrast to that of ancient Greece. In the story, Averroës casually observes some children play-acting, then later hears a traveler ineptly describe an actual theatrical performance he once saw in a distant land, but still fails to understand that the tragedies and comedies of which Aristotle writes are a kind of performance art, rather than merely literature.

The process of writing the story is meant to parallel the events in the story itself; Borges writes in an afterword to the story that his attempt to understand Averroës was as doomed as Averroës's attempt to understand drama. "I felt that the work mocked me, foiled me, thwarted me. I felt that Averroës, trying to imagine what a play is without ever having suspected what a theater is, was no more absurd than I, trying to imagine Averroës yet with no more material than a few snatches from Renan, Lane, and Asín Palacios.""

Borges, Jorge Luis: El Aleph

I am not sure if this counts as it is a collection of short stories, so I will also submit my personal choice that best fits an unaligned Leitner in my opinion. "The title work, "The Aleph", describes a point in space that contains all other spaces at once. The work also presents the idea of infinite time. Borges writes in the original afterword, dated May 3, 1949 (Buenos Aires), that most of the stories belong to the genre of fantasy, mentioning themes such as identity and immortality."

Bosch, Pseudonymous: The Secret Series

The series is about two children who are not named Cass and Max-Ernest. Cass is a survivalist, while Max-Ernest has a condition (though no one knows quite what his condition is). One day, they are swept into the dangerous world of the Terces Society and the Midnight Sun...and the Secret.

Features alchemy, the quest for immortality, time travel, a very Lemony narrator, and the exploration of all five senses.

Breed-Wrisley, Kira and Scott Cawthon: Five Nights At Freddy's: The Silver Eyes

From the creator of the bestselling horror video game series Five Nights at Freddy's.Ten years after the horrific murders at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza that ripped their town apart, Charlie, whose father owned the restaurant, and her childhood friends reunite on the anniversary of the tragedy and find themselves at the old pizza place which had been locked up and abandoned for years. After they discover a way inside, they realize that things are not as they used to be. The four adult-sized animatronic mascots that once entertained patrons have changed. They now have a dark secret . . . and a murderous agenda.

Bulgakov, Mikhail: The Master and Margarita

One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing literally to go to hell for him.

Burroughs, William S.: Naked Lunch

It follows Bill Lee through Interzone: a surreal, orgiastic wasteland of drugs, depravity, political plots, paranoia, sadistic medical experiments and endless, gnawing addiction. The book is structured as a series of loosely connected vignettes, intended by Burroughs to be read in any order, and the main character takes on various aliases as he travels from the U.S. to Mexico, eventually to Tangier and the dreamlike Interzone. Burroughs wrote in his introduction that "The title means exactly what the words say: naked lunch, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork."

Could this book be considered as being aligned to the Spiral? Could it be Flesh? I don't know, but it is certainly something or other.

Byng, Georgia: Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism

Molly Moon is a British preteen living in a terrible orphanage. Just before her only friend is adopted and moves to America without saying goodbye, she finds a rare book on hypnotism, and gains the ability to hypnotize anyone through eye contact and make them do whatever she wants. She heads off to America to find her friend, hypnotizing people all the way. Meanwhile, a sinister wanna-be hypnotist stalks her... and he is willing to do anything to get the book in his hands.

Sequels deal with further developing psychic powers, including body-hopping, weather control, and even time travel.

Carroll, Lewis: The Hunting of the Snark

An epic poem which hits quite a few different fears; the Hunt is an obvious one, and given the author, so is the Spiral. The sea voyage has elements of Vast, and various characters can be read as Flesh, Stranger, and even Web. The poem seems to end with the Lonely; " He had softly and suddenly vanished away — For the Snark was a Boojum, you see."

Denning, G.S.: Warlock Holmes

A Sherlock Holmes parody in which the titular detective is a rather abstracted mage, Watson is the brains of the outfit, and Gregson and Lestrade are an ogre and a vampire, respectively. Together, they investigate supernatural crime in Victorian England.

DeTerlizzi, Tony: The Search for WondLa

The Search for WondLa is the first book in a trilogy about a human girl, Eva Nine, in a strange and unfamiliar world.

She actually spends a lot of this book believing she is the last of her species surrounded by all sorts of strange creatures she can never quite feel close to (lonely, extinction) while being hunted by a trophy hunter who wants to give her to a mysterious queen.

On why it's Lonely: a large portion of the book is spent with someone she cannot communicate with and feels distant from, alongside the general Lonely vibes of "last human" stories.

On why it's Extinction: This is earth. A long-destroyed earth, specifically (she visits the ruins of NYC, I have proof), and these alien races have moved in now that the humans are all "gone" (complicated). It's heavily implied the earth was destroyed in some nuclear war or natural disaster, with the alien species having restored the earth from a wasteland.

On why it's hunt: she spends the entire book being hunted and being afraid because of that, what more do I need to say?

On why it belongs here: quite the fear cocktail for a children's book, isn't it?

El-Mohtar, Amal and Max Gladstone: This Is How You Lose the Time War

The novel is about two agents on rival sides of a time war, Red and Blue, who are both working to ensure that their respective futures — the highly technological Agency and the biological Garden — come to pass. Despite their opposing organizations, Red and Blue begin exchanging letters across time and space, and develop affection for each other that threatens not only them, but the entire time war.

Fforde, Jasper: Thursday Next series

Thursday Next lives in an Alternate History. In her world, Time Travel, cloning and genetic engineering are commonplace; resurrected dodos are the household pet of choice. The obscenely powerful Goliath Corporation, which nearly singlehandedly reconstructed England after World War II, now runs the country as a virtual police state. And literature, particularly classic literature, is very, very, very Serious Business. Writers are revered with nearly spiritual devotion, controversial claims about books and authors can be criminal, and an entire police squad, the LiteraTecs, exist to keep the literary scene in order. Thursday works for just such a unit in Swindon, with her friend and colleague, the exceedingly polite Bowden Cable.

In the course of rescuing her Gadgeteer Genius uncle Mycroft from international arch-criminal Acheron Hades, a gleefully evil individual with supernatural powers, Thursday discovers the Great Library, a sort of pocket dimension that exists 'behind the scenes' of all works of literature, where all literary characters live. They're self-aware, acting out their roles when a person reads a book but chilling out and living their own lives as soon as they close it. The Great Library is governed by the Council of Genres and kept in line by Jurisfiction, another police force whose task it is to make sure the plot of every book stays the same every time someone reads it. (Insofar as they can.)

Such is the universe of Jasper Fforde's meta-fictional masterpiece, the Thursday Next series. The author hangs a lampshade on everything and anything relating to classic literature, the tropes of police fiction and spy fiction, and even the relationship between a work of fiction and its audience. Heavy on wordplay and puns, the series deals with the tireless heroine's adventures balancing her work as an agent of Jurisfiction in the Great Library and LiteraTec in the outside world, to say nothing of her responsibilities as a wife and mother.

Gaiman, Neil & Terry Pratchett: Good Omens

Blank

Grahame-Smith, Seth: How to Survive a Horror Movie: All the Skills to Dodge the Kills

Every month or so, a new horror movie hits #1 at the box office no wonder there are dozens of new fright films slated for release in 2007. But if you find yourself trapped in one of these movies, there's no need to be afraid. How to Survive a Horror Movie teaches readers how to cope with every kind of horror movie obstacle, from ax-wielding psychopaths to haunted Japanese VHS tapes. Chapters include:

-How to Survive a Night of Babysitting -How to Convince the Skeptical Local Sheriff -How to Perform an Exorcism -How to Tell If You've Been Dead Since the Beginning of the Movie -How to Vanquish a Murderous Doll

Full of illustrated instructions on avoiding ghosts, serial killers, haunted cars, murderous pets, telekinetic prom queens, and countless other hazards, How to Survive a Horror Movie is essential reading for movie buffs of all ages!

Grimm, Brothers: Grimm's Fairy Tales

Can't beat the classics, especially when the original versions feature cannibalism, murder, mutilation, and torture!

Holt, Tom: Doughnut

Multiversal travel is made possible through mathematics and fried dough.

Hussie, Andrew: Homestuck

This thing is a tome of madness, chaos, and early 2000s Internet culture (oops, tautology!)

***

you know why

Johnson, Jeremy Robert: We Live Inside You

"We are within you, and we are growing. Watching. Waiting for your empires to fall. It won't be long now. We are the fear of death that drives you and the terrible hunger that reshapes you in its name. We are the vengeance born from senseless slaughter and the pulsing reptile desire that negates your consciousness. We are the lie on your lips, the collapsing star in your heart, and the still-warm gun in your shaking hands. The illusion of control is all we'll allow you, and no matter what you do... WE LIVE INSIDE YOU"

This book is one of those story collections that everybody should read. In turns fascinating, poignant, scary and all too human, Jeremy Robert Johnson taps into the nightmare psyche that threatens to eat you every moment of your life. Each story highlights another gremlin that snacks on your nerves, tells you things you don't want to hear.

Langlois, Amelie C.: The Sister Verse Series

John, an unstable detective living in an alternate future, is plagued by hallucinations of a malevolent, shapeshifting entity, known as the Lord in White, that haunted his childhood. While he struggles to maintain his grip on reality, he soon discovers that his world is a terrifying illusion designed to make him suffer. Surreal, horrifying, and unflinchingly brutal – enter a world of blood and fear. Enter the Sister Verse.

The series reads like a fever dream. The world reflects the fears of all the characters in the most bizarre way possible, and things continue to unravel the further they go, typically ending in a forest made of liquid meat that surrounds a black hole shaped like a willow with teeth. It is revealed in the first book that the whole reality John and the rest of the cast of characters live in and themselves was created by the Lord in White for his own amusement. The Lord in White is completely aware that it’s in a fictional universe, and is implied to have the power to rewrite parts of the story, being the avatar of the Sister Verse. It often refers to the reader directly, as well as real world occurrences and future in-universe events, to the point that it literally recites lines from the book. And that's just the first book in the series, with the Lovecraftian horror continuing further in the sequels as the past of the Dreadlands is revealed, along with the past of its characters.

Lewis, C.S.: The Silver Chair

"Eustace and Jill escape from the bullies at school through a strange door in the wall, which, for once, is unlocked. It leads to the open moor...or does it? Once again Aslan has a task for the children, and Narnia needs them. Through dangers untold and caverns deep and dark, they pursue the quest that brings them face to face with the evil Witch. She must be defeated if Prince Rillian is to be saved."

Lovecraft, H.P.: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

Uncelebrated writer and illustrious dreamer Randolph Carter dreams three times of a majestic sunset city, but each time he is abruptly snatched away before he can see it up close. When he prays to the gods of dream to reveal the whereabouts of the phantasmal city, they do not answer, and his dreams of the city stop altogether. Undaunted, Carter decides to use all his talents in the dream-world to find the legendary mountain Kadath, where the wiser Earth Gods live, in order to ask them for the location of his beloved sunset city. He initiates a quest through the depths of the Dreamlands, finding the weirdest things and meeting the strangest friends and foes.

Unknowingly to Carter, a powerful entity is bent on making him desist of his quest...

Lubar, David: Weenies series

A series of horror story collections for kids which range from the funny to the weird to the outright twisted.

Lyons, Steve: The Crooked World

Synopsis: The people of the Crooked World lead an idyllic existence.

Take Streaky Bacon, for example. This jovial farmer wants nothing more from life than a huge blunderbuss, with which he can blast away at his crop-stealing nemesis. And then there's Angel Falls, a racing driver with a string of victories to her name. Sure, her trusted guardian might occasionally put on a mask and menace her for her prize money, but that's just life, right? And for Jasper the cat, nothing could be more pleasant than a nice, long nap in his kitchen — so long as that darn mouse doesn't jam his tail into the plug socket again.

But somebody is about to shatter all those lives. Somebody is about to change everything — and it's possible that no one on the Crooked World will ever be happy again.

The Doctor's TARDIS is about to arrive. And when it does... That's all folks!

Propaganda: okay. okay okayokayokkay. I can be normal about this book (a lie). The TARDIS lands on a planet that operates on cartoon logic. The Doctor immediately gets shot in the chest and everyone is very confused when he doesn't immediately heal. The travelers have inadvertently introduced the real world into this Saturday Morning fantasyland, with concepts like death and sex and social inequality. For the first time, people can die permanently. The two-bit villains unite to nuke the heroic characters. The Scooby gang actually do discover the flayed corpse of God. In the middle of it all is the Doctor at maximum Nyarlathotep, fomenting revolution and drastic metaphysical upheaval in his strange, too-real clothes. If nothing else, vote for this book for actually making me cry over the death of Scrappy Fuckin' Doo!

Nash, Ogden: A Tale of the 13th Floor

A poem which warns against murderous retribution and illustrates the hellish fate of killers tied forever to their victims in the afterlife. Link: https://allpoetry.com/A-Tale-Of-The-Thirteenth-Floor

Osman, Richard: The Thursday Murder Club

“In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late?”

While it seems like a shoe-in for the Hunt with tracking down who did the crime, the book goes in areas that could consider being touched by the Lonely, the End, and the Eye. After all, this does take place in a retirement village — people die, people are lonely and these four senior citizens want to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Pinkwater, Daniel: Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars

Leonard Neeble has been unhappy since his parents moved from the big city to suburban Kangaroo Park, New Jersey. His new school, Bat Masterson Jr. High, is terrible, and he has no friends since his classmates are snobbish louts who won't be friends with him because he's portly.

Things change once a new student shows up from The Bronx: Alan Mendelsohn, a trollish student who shuts the school down by telling everyone he's from Mars. After they both get suspended for acting out, the two boys journey to Downtown Hogboro, where they start a Mind Control course that teaches them telekinesis and, eventually, how to travel between dimensions.

Pirinçci, Akif: Felidae

Francis is a cat who has moved with his owner to a city in Germany. There, he comes across a mystery involving the murders of several neighborhood cats. Think Warriors, but it is a murder mystery written for adults. It has a lot of Slaughter and Hunt going on, but the killer's motives and backstory would honestly make him a prime Avatar for the Extinction.

The serial killer, Claudandus aka Pascal, is purely motivated by a deep hatred of humans after a traumatic past as the victim of some truly sadistic animal experiments in which he and other cats were used as lab rats, which leads him to try to create a race of "genetically perfect" cats while murdering those he considers to be inferior. He dreams of a future in which humans have been replaced as the dominant species by this future breed of cats, the narration even including an imaginary scenerio of the very last human trying to hide in the ruins of civilization before being hunted down like prey.

Rix, Jamie: Grizzly Tales For Gruesome Kids

A series of cautionary tales for lovers of screams! Getting a haircut? eating spaghetti? Having a birthday party? You may think these all sound like very ordinary things to do. But read on and see just how grizzly they can be!

Scieszka, Jon: The Stinky Cheese Man

it scared the FUCK out of me as a child, I have no idea why and I don't remember what it was about, and just its art style still creeps me out and I'm in my thirties now. That's got to count for something, yeah? ...okay this prolly isn't a great one for the tournament, but if you're struggling to fill in the brackets.

Shannon, David: No, David!

When David Shannon was five years old, he wrote and illustrated his first book. On every page were these words: NO, DAVID! . . . and a picture of David doing things he was not supposed to do.Now David is all grown up. But some things never change. . . .Twenty years after its initial publication, No, David! remains a perennial household favorite, delighting children, parents, and teachers alike. David is a beloved character, whose unabashed good humor, mischievous smile, and laughter-inducing antics underline the love parents have for their children -- even when they misbehave.

Sims, Jonathan: Thirteen Storeys

"You're cordially invited to dinner. Penthouse access is available via the broken freight elevator. Black tie optional.

A dinner party is held in the penthouse of a multimillion-pound development. All the guests are strangers - even to their host, the billionaire owner of the building. None of them know why they were selected to receive his invitation. Whether privileged or deprived, besides a postcode, they share only one thing in common - they've all experienced a shocking disturbance within the building's walls.

By the end of the night, their host is dead, and none of the guests ever said what happened. His death remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries - until now.

But are you ready for their stories?"

Skipp, John: Don't Push the Button

We all know horror. It's in our face every day. You can try to negotiate the nightmare but total chaos and destruction is just one button-push away.

In this intensely personal collection of short stories, screenplays, and essays, the author walks you through the light and the dark with an unflinching eye. Revealing both the best and worst of us, one laugh and scream at a time.

It ain't pretty. But it's beautiful. Once you go all the way.

Stine, R.L.: Goosebumps

It is a series of horror novels written for very young audiences. The protagonists in these stories are teens or pre-teens who find themselves in frightening circumstances, often involving the supernatural, the paranormal or the occult. The best way to describe these books is that they are The Twilight Zone for pre-adolescents, with a twist at the end of every book (sometimes cruel, sometimes not, sometimes non-existent, which is a twist in and of itself given the series). It has spawned a pair of television series, a video games series, a comic series and merchandise, as well as a pair of feature films.

While the books are written for children and so they might not be that scary, they can still get quite creepy, and you might find one book for every Entity if you search hard enough. The book covers can also get really creepy to look at, too.

Theis, Jim: The Eye of Argon

Described as "the worst fantasy novella ever", The Eye of Argon is a story by then 16 year-old Jim Theis. It's the tale of Grignr, a foul-mouthed barbarian warrior who is trying to escape the dungeons of Evil Overlord Agaphim and rescue a young woman named Carthena from a pagan cult who want to sacrifice her to their idol — a statue with one eye called "The Eye of Argon". (A "scarlet emerald", complete with some interesting plumbing.)

Published in the fanzine OSFAN 7 in 1970, the story is well known for its abundant cliches, shoddy spelling, flat characters, wooden dialogue and overly colourful writing. Every woman is a "wench", eyes are "emerald orbs". Almost nothing is ever "said" — instead it is "queried" or "ejaculated" or "husked" or "stated whimsicoracally". There's an extended scene involving elderly cult priests groping Carthena, and she is described earlier as a "half-naked harlot… with a lithe, opaque nose".

The most widely-known and circulated copy of the story comes to an abrupt and unsatisfactory halt, and for many years it was believed that the ending was lost forever (or even, in some quarters, that the story was never completed). Recent years have seen the separate discoveries of two intact copies of the fanzine in which The Eye of Argon debuted, so it is now known how the tale ends. (With multiple exclamation marks, it turns out.)

At science fiction conventions, The Eye of Argon is now a sort of parlor game. All participants sit in a circle with a hard copy of the story, and the first one starts reading aloud — pronouncing every word as it's misspelled, and including every adjective. When they finally burst into laughter, the copy is passed to the next person. If a person manages to make it through more than a page, the copy is sometimes passed anyway, on the grounds that the reader must have special training as a news anchor.

Tokuda-Hall, Maggie: The Mermaid The Witch and The Sea

Follows mainly two characters – Evelyn, the daughter of a wealthy family, sent off on a ship to an arranged marriage, and Flora, known by the alias Florian, a pirate on said ship. This ship is a conship, as it takes people on long travels only to sell them as slaves. Themes of the vast, stranger, the end, the slaughter, and the desolation are commonly present throughout the book

Traditional (German): Der Struwwelpeter

1845 German children's book filled with cautionary tales. These cautionary tales are more grim than others, however — they often end in death or dismemberment for the child. They are a source of plenty of nightmare fuel, too.

Notable examples: The Dreadful Story of Harriet/Pauline and the Matches - Desolation, she plays with matches and burns to death. The Story of the Wild Huntsman - Hunt, a hare steals a hunter's rifle and eyeglasses and hunts him. The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb - Flesh(?), Conrad is warned by his mother not to suck his thumbs, but he does anyway. So a tailor appears and snips them off. The Story of Flying Robert - Vast, Robert goes outside during a storm and the wind picks up his umbrella, carrying him off never to be seen again.

Trumbo, Dalton: Johnny Got His Gun

It follows a young man named Joe Bonham, who, after becoming grievously injured during World War I, is left deaf, blind, dumb, and without any limbs. Throughout the novel, Joe reminisces about the life that he's lost, waxes philosophical about war and conscription, and tries desperately to communicate with the doctors keeping him alive.

The novel is heavily about the horrors of war, which would make it Slaughter, but in Joe's plight there's also another sort of horror: He can't move, he can't see, he can't speak. He is effectively trapped in his own body, a torment that could be but it's not quite Buried. There's also some argument for the Spiral to be there as well, as his condition makes it hard for him and the reader to know when he's awake or when he's dreaming, to say nothing on how the horrible situation he's in affects his sanity.

"I don't know whether I'm alive and dreaming or dead and remembering."

Van Allsburg, Chris: The Mysteries of Harris Burdick

Downloadable PDF: https://mrsgraveswebsite.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/6/8/12686140/the_mysteries_of_harris_burdick.pdf

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick consists of a series of images, ostensibly created by Harris Burdick, a man who has mysteriously disappeared. Each image is accompanied by a title and a single line of text, which encourage readers to create their own stories.

Vasquez, Jhonen: Squee's Wonderful Big Giant Book of Unspeakable Horrors

Squee (named after the sound he makes when he's afraid) is a little boy whose short life is an unending parade of horrors. His parents outwardly detest him to the point where his father watches footage of his birth played in reverse for amusement, and the only kid in school who likes him is the Antichrist, who Squee is terrified of. He has never, ever, ever, had a good dream. Through the course of the book, he is visited by aliens, ghosts, zombies, time travelers and the serial killer next door.

Though Squee is as frightened by all this as anyone else might be, he takes it in his stride with a passive resilience that only a child could possess and the help of Shmee, his teddy bear and 'trauma-sponge.' He gets through the horrors just by being a simple-minded kid. Adults dwell on the past and the future. Kids live squarely in the present, daydream about flying and drink Tang until they forget it all. He takes for granted that the world is scary and just goes to school each day, provided he hasn't been abducted by aliens.

#leitner tournament #reading list #16th poll #non-affiliated

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