Well, yeah, but a great deal of said cultural abundance assumes you've got a pretty strong familiarity with the Bible and a few classical authors. You're gonna

Well, yeah, but a great deal of said cultural abundance assumes you've got a pretty strong familiarity with the Bible and a few classical authors. You're gonna be losing a lot from a pretty big chunk of Western art up the Moderns or so, and still quite a bit after, without that foundation, so by skipping out on that not even that large set of works you're giving up on serious engagement with most of Western art. It'll be a minefield of confusion and things you miss without even knowing they're there. Summaries and retellings won't cut it, since good references to those works will lean on nuance that's not usually present in "bare bones" or cultural-osmosis versions of the tales (the linked article covers some of this, in fact), to the point that making such references that assume only a kind of pop-culture understanding of these things tends to be a mark of poor, pseudo-intellectual, trying-too-hard art. As far as things to skip due to an abundance of choices go, those are perhaps unwise ones to avoid, if some part of the other "paths" you'll walk include pretty much any other areas of Western art. Maybe you decide your "path" is 19th century French literature. Guess which two bodies of work are foundational to that? OK, so you just like sci-fi. Well, there are the Bible and the Classical writers again, at least in the better stuff. Medieval studies? Yeah, obviously. Film—like, pretty much any of it that comes from the West and has artistic value? Oh god, yes. Well screw all this, I'm gonna focus on Arabic or Persian works. Oh. They have significant cultural ties to the Greeks too, thanks to Alexander, so I'm back to that again. Fine art. There aren't even words so I'm safe there. Oh, wait, no I'm not. Damn. Music? Ugh, there's Achilles and Abraham and Aeneas and all the rest. Philosophy? Nope, too much of that assumes the same common, smallish set of common experience as everything else. OK, fine, I'm so over this, I'm just gonna play video games. This Deux Ex thing is supposed to be good for some reason, let's start there. Oh... oh no... not again!