My Most Influential Books
Apr. 11th, 2004 12:55 pmThis'll be another post sometime (most likely from
toysdream, because it's one of his hot topics), but I hate memes. I believe in convergence, which is something different, but the way meme has been coopted by current pop culture is just plain inaccurate, as a concurrent thought everyone shares. Actually, the entire LJ "meme" thing is enough to prove that, because an LJ meme is actually the close cousin to a chain letter, a spin the bottle party game. The actually academic meme concept is, I think, full of it. (I'll let Toys elaborate more because he does it better.)
Why I'm Talking About This: Because I gacked this particular "meme" from
redredshoes whose own various interesting thinky thoughts about "most influential" versus "most important" lit that particular fire in me that flares up in my every time someone publishes a list of the "Best" or "Most Important" films or what-say-you. Because hello, such a list can never take into account all the ways in which art is "influential" - globally, Birth of a Nation was a hugely influential film, because of the political fallout that came from it here in the U.S., but because is it a film that everyone today should see for its "message"? Uh, no. Criteria for judging "influence" is something I can get into long arguments about, because no matter what kind of judging body you assemble, you're never going to get one that can see all the angles, that can defend their choices across the board as having taken everything into account. Which basically reduces any "best of" list to one of personal preferences, based on whatever parameters you felt like setting up. Period.
That said, I did go ahead and compile my own personal list of "Most Influential Books." (Because of course you're reading this because you want to know about me, right?) My criteria was "how long a shadow did it cast on my psyche?", so you will, perhaps not so surprisingly, notice a lot of children's books here. ( My Own Most Influential Books In No Particular Order )
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
Why I'm Talking About This: Because I gacked this particular "meme" from
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
That said, I did go ahead and compile my own personal list of "Most Influential Books." (Because of course you're reading this because you want to know about me, right?) My criteria was "how long a shadow did it cast on my psyche?", so you will, perhaps not so surprisingly, notice a lot of children's books here. ( My Own Most Influential Books In No Particular Order )