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The Big Brother Reading List

10 pointsjenkinsj10 comments
On HN

Books about a world where everyone is watched:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_new_world

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag_Archipelago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkness_at_noon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farenheit_451

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children_of_Men

Comments

It's cool that the Puzzle Palace was popular within the NSA itself.

How could I forget Kafka! Good save.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_(novel)

written by the same author as 'Brave New World', Aldous Huxley, the book details more of a Carrot approach to big brother.

Someone should whip up a quick website listing all these books. I would do it myself but I have neither the money or knowledge to do so. I will be reading all the books listed in this thread post haste.

I'm so glad that We is on there. Very few people I've ever met have read it but it's one of my all time favorites.

Could anyone suggest an additional title?

Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow

Proverbs for Paranoids: 1. You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures. 2. The innocence of the creatures is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the Master. 3. If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers. 4. You hide, they seek. 5. Paranoids are not paranoid because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations. -- Collected from Gravity's Rainbow, V237, 241, 251, 262, & 292

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