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MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS AND MOVIES, AND WHY

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Sunday, May 3, 2026 17:28
VIEWED: 4878
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SIGNYM

Monday, May 28, 2012 4:00 AM

Gotta share some of the books and movies that have really influenced my thinking.

The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner. An economic theory history book which shows the struggles and passions and progression of economic thought.

Man Against Myth by Barrows Dunham. It talks about some of our basic assumptions of how society works... assumptions which are SO basic we don't even know they're there. Traces the progression from reliance on religion as our essential paradigm for how things "should be" (Middle Ages) to our shift into revering nature and the "natural man" as our underlying paradigm (age of Enlightenment). Reading about these assumptions made me smack my forehead and realize the peril of unconscious thought.

Descent of Woman by Elaine Morgan. This was another one of those books that caused me to smack my forehead. I may not be able to come up with good ideas, but I can recognize them when I read them! Morgan details the variety of ways that humans are unique among the apes (including upright posture, diving reflex, fat layer, and loss of fur) and accounts for these differences by postulating an aquatic portion of human evolution. I have to say, as I look at our macro- and micro-nutrient requirements (taurine, omega-3, iodine, and vitamins A &D) it only adds to the hypothesis. I think Dr Hardy (the person who originally came up with the idea) and Elaine Morgan are correct.

An article on the red deer of Scotland in Science by Clutton Brock. It led me to realize several things... (1)Males which do not participate in the raising of young are banished from the protection of the herd/ flock to die, since they would otherwise compete for food resources. (2) This creates vicious aggression among males, and sexual dimorphism which can become an evolutionary dead end. But evolution, species survival, and mating strategies... it's ALL about the kids, yanno?

Hearts and Minds A compilation of journalists' pictures and movies of the Vietnam War... the stuff they DIDN'T put on TV. Up until then, I think I intellectually understood that people around the world were suffering. After that movie, I felt it. It put a permanent kink in my sympathies; I could no longer think about war and exploitation without being sad, and angry.

What about you? What have you seen or read that taught you something, or let you look at the world in a new way?

SIGNYM

Monday, May 28, 2012 4:14 AM

Oh, and FIREFLY. It got me on this board, talking to you all. I've learned a lot about people and have changed my mind about some things.

6IXSTRINGJACK

Monday, May 28, 2012 4:17 AM

1) 1984 - If you've ever read it, you know why. 'Nuff Said.....

2) Brave New World - If you ever read 1984 and wanted a possible happy ending to it, you also know why.

3) Animal Farm - Can you believe that my "Great Aunt" (my grandmother's sister) gave me to read as a child?

I never read it back then. I thought it was a "book" version of Charlotte's Web. NOT AT ALL... Stephen King, short of The Mist, couldn't have ever made a scarier story in his life....

Why would a rich old broad who was going to pass and not give any of the wealth to our side of the family send me this book at 11 years old? How different would I be today had I read it then?

Freddy Kruger.... this book is the scariest thing I've ever read, and that includes 1984

As for movies, here's my top 5 today.... (granted, this changes often)
1. Donnie Darko.... I refuese to read the online explanations and will probably enjoy this movie until I die without understanding it completely.

2. INK..... I can't tell you ANYTHING about this movie without spoiling something. Just watch it. It's Indie, but it's VERY well done..... It's the favorite movie of everybody I've suggested it to. (The only spoiler I will provide is that an entire episode of FRINGE was based off of this concept, and they did a great job of making it their own)

3. Mululland Drive - Overall, it's much less intriguing than Donnie Darko in my mind, but something about the scene behind Denny's still scares the shit out of me.

4. Little Shop of Horrors.......

F U for hating me for it.....

I categorically HATE musicals. I grew up with this one though, even though I wasn't aware it was a remake that Jack Nicholson semi-starred in black and white before One Flew Over the Co-co's Nest!

Rick Morannis and Steve Martin at their very best....

5. CUBE.... All of them together.....

Cube one was amazing. Cube 2 was what you would expect. Cube Zero made it all come together....

You don't have to actually be living in the Cube to be in the cube....

On an aside, PI to me was overatted.... It was good, but it was no B/W flick on the par of Clerks.....

And on that note.... F Clerks 2 and the commercialization!!!!!!!

SIGNYM

Monday, May 28, 2012 9:17 PM

Well, on the subject of good and evil, I was highly influenced by

A Wrinkle in Time by Madelaine L'Engle. It can't be explained. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wrinkle_in_Time

Also, much later That Hideous Strength by CS Lewis. The description of how one can get sucked into evil because it is presented as mundane...

I'm not a religious person and both of these writers are religious, with religious elements in each story. Nonetheless, the descriptions of evil are frightening.

PIRATENEWS

Tuesday, May 29, 2012 12:18 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

1) 1984 - If you've ever read it, you know why. 'Nuff Said.....

2) Brave New World - If you ever read 1984 and wanted a possible happy ending to it, you also know why.

3) Animal Farm - Can you believe that my "Great Aunt" (my grandmother's sister) gave me to read as a child?

Everyone should read these Presidential Operations Manuals.

4) Conan The Barbarian - To understand how to treat the womens and deal with Bad Guys.

ANTHONYT

Tuesday, May 29, 2012 4:16 AM

Hello,

I'll throw Fahrenheit 451 and Ender's Game into the mix. Two good sci-fi novels with important messages about indoctrination and censorship.

--Anthony

Note to Self:
Raptor - women who want to control their reproductive processes are sluts.
Wulf - Niki is a stupid fucking bitch who should hurry up and die.
Never forget what these men are.
“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” -Thomas Szasz

1KIKI

Tuesday, May 29, 2012 5:03 AM

I read The Aquatic Ape which makes more and more sense as time goes on.

Another book was Mother Love with traced the myths of said subject, including the fact of large-scale abandonment of children due to either economic choice (others can look after them) or economic necessity. It traced the development of the idea of natural mother love through the Enlightenment up through today. What really sold me on the idea of ideal mother love as a socially instilled value was the amount of research that went into it, from parish records and bible inscriptions through census figures and on to parish sermons and Enlightenment writings.

There was a snippet of a study I read which traced the ideals of beauty in cultures through time and around the globe as expressions of wealth, which are applicable to this day. Every time I look at a model, I snicker inside a little.

Fisch and Spehlmann's EEG Primer was a revelation in how the brain wildly remodels itself during adolescence. I understood at least partially the idea of the mind as a product of the brain.

Jared Diamond's Collapse was also very thought-provoking. I keep throwing ideas against it to see what breaks and what sticks.

I don't have any films to mention, but certain pieces of music speak to me in a language for which I have no words. They remind me that there are different ways of knowing about the world.

6IXSTRINGJACK

Tuesday, May 29, 2012 5:24 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by ANTHONYT:
I'll throw Fahrenheit 451 and Ender's Game into the mix. Two good sci-fi novels with important messages about indoctrination and censorship.

Ooooooh.... Ender's Game. The only one on this list so far I've read and the only one in the series I've read as well.

AMAZING story. I couldn't put the book down, and that's saying a LOT since it takes me a LONG time to finish a book. I do plan on reading more of series someday, and it's "Bean" offshoots. I just hope any of the other stories match up at all to the origin.

If you haven't read it already Anthony, I think you'd also really like Card's "Empire" as well. In some ways, it's much more futuristic than EG, simply because we've advanced so much technologically as a species since then, but it takes place today. Apparently it was so popular that it spawned a XBox Live Arcade game entitled "Shadow Complex", a Metroid-esque game-style based story that I felt complemented the Empire book in a way I've never before experienced.

As a side, I think it's really cool how video games today are becoming a serious media and that when excecuted as well as a tie in with another genre as this game was, playing through an experience that touched you as deeply as only a great novel could is really a unique experience. I do hope we see more book tie-ins in the video game industry in the future. We've had movie adaptations for 20 years in the industry, and as any gamer knows, 99% of them really suck.

6IXSTRINGJACK

Tuesday, May 29, 2012 5:34 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by PIRATENEWS:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

1) 1984 - If you've ever read it, you know why. 'Nuff Said.....

2) Brave New World - If you ever read 1984 and wanted a possible happy ending to it, you also know why.

3) Animal Farm - Can you believe that my "Great Aunt" (my grandmother's sister) gave me to read as a child?

Everyone should read these Presidential Operations Manuals.

4) Conan The Barbarian - To understand how to treat the womens and deal with Bad Guys.

Seriously man... As much as I enjoyed them, I'm afraid to even read any of them again. The first two books seriously changed my life at 22-23 years old, and some days I really wish I'd never read them. They really had a DRAMATIC impact on my life and my view of the world. I'd never even really paid any attention to politics at all before then. I don't exactly know the mindset behind why these books have been all but banned from public school today, I do understand that anything written that is so unbelievably powerful and potentially true isn't something They'd want taking any time away from the "good people" who would be better off putting their off-work hours wondering who will win Dancing With the Stars this season.

I didn't read Animal Farm until I was about 30 years old, so I don't think the life-long effects were as dramatic, especially since I was already living in the rabbit hole for about 7-8 years prior, but my GOD was that a powerful story.

I REALLY wonder how my life would have been different had I red that when I was given it at 11 years old. I really wish my great-aunt was still alive today and I could find out if she sent that to me because she unknowingly thought it was Charlotte's Web, or because she had some other mysterious reason for wanting me to read it at that age. We were not close at all, and I may have only seen her twice a year at most at family parties. The only thing she probably knew about me was that I enjoyed reading very much at that age. Aside from sci-fi short story collections my dad rented from the library though, most of my reading was filler crap from the Troll book club at school, usually in the "scary stories" area.

All that time I had the scariest story ever written sitting on my bookshelf and I never even cracked it open.....

CAVETROLL

Tuesday, May 29, 2012 5:56 PM

So many books on this list that I've read. Here's some of my favorites;
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Farnham's Freehold
Starship Troopers all by Robert A. Heinlein. They called him the Dean of Science Fiction, and these are 3 of the reasons. Freehold and Troopers are from Heinlein's juveniles, and they are rousing adventure tales for young minds, but pose some ethical dilemmas for older readers. Moon is a blueprint for how to run a revolution.

Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Excellent TEOTWAWKI novel before the genre had been named.

Dungeon, Fire and Sword by John J. Robinson. A history of the Knights Templar. Innovation and politics, with a side helping of betrayal.

Crusade in Europe by Dwight D. Eisenhower. Brings to light the battles fought off the battlefield, and the massive logistical effort it took to win.