Ulysses. Surprised I haven't seen it mentioned yet, as it normally is in book threads on HN. The reason that it had, and still has, such a positive influence

Ulysses. Surprised I haven't seen it mentioned yet, as it normally is in book threads on HN. The reason that it had, and still has, such a positive influence on my life is the plethora of literary tools which it possesses. It allows for infinite play and imagination, while still being the apparent product of extreme dedication and earned mastery. In fact, I prefer Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man as a novel, and I'm sure that the Wake is a perfect encyclopedia of language, cryptography, history, et al. But Ulysses takes it as an (humerous, profound, tricky, psychoanalytic, poetic, radical) example of the process of artistic experiment, the practically infinite range of the possible, and the unforgiving merit of deep study and eclectic knowledge. I go back every so often to bounce my own ideas and troubling sentences off of it, more often than not just to get a little bit of validation. Next would be Hesiod - Theogany, a 900 line 'epic' poem from the dawn of written literature. He is considered to be the first economist, though at that point of course it is simply philosophy. It explained for me the concept of emergent consciousness in a very biblical way, and let me realise the notion that religious works are just misunderstood metaphors; products of an imperfect language. It's unsurprising I suppose that something so short, that was written almost 3000 years ago, has such incredible lessons and timeless human value.