Sounds weird, but Ascendance of a bookworm and time. Use to work agile and doing things quick, then I read bookworm and the tiny gremlin who wanted to do things quick and now, and the consequences for doing so.
Now I give as much time as I can/need for anything and everything. And I now start getting annoyed when family says they’re dropping in. Like dude, give me time to prepare, like 2-4 days heads up so I can clean, get more food and properly welcome you.
Monogatari series novels and perhaps the anime as well. It really drove home the point that: You (I) am also human so what i observe, excuse, despise in others I will necessarily also contain. And i can chose to seek help, ask for forgiveness, deal with it, heal, forgive and so on not just for other people but importantly also for myself.
Not that I really gained much competence in this matter from this but the thought continues to stick, and it’s demonstrably a good thought.
1984 and it’s spiritual prequel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas .
These books opened up my teen mind to the fact that we are always, individually and as a society, creating, editing, and manipulating consensual reality.
Unfortunately the bad guys are way ahead of us on the manipulation bit, and with LLMs/Gen-AI I fear a total collapse of consensual reality. But if we have enough Hunter S’s in the world, we may still be in the fight.
The Good Place, especially the ending of it.
Tap for spoiler
How much of our lives now through capitalism are passively “bad actions”, how people can always change and grow still even if it should be the “end” of their journey, how shitty the idea of living forever somewhere in the afterlife actually would be, and becoming comfortable with the idea of death and the whole unknowing nature of it.
Really a wild piece of work from the same man who made The Office, Parks and Rec, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
NINE NINE!!
Mornings in Jenin. Growing up as a child of refugees, it was difficult to fully grasp the horrors of Israeli violence against Palestinians, my parents shielded us from the worst they witnessed, only telling us of the good memories before they were forced to leave. This book helped shape who I am today, motivated me to learn the truth, and exposed me to a whole world of non colonial literature, both fiction and non. And while it is a story of fiction, it is based on the reality of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, ongoing for 78 years now.
Probably a bit stereotypical, but in my teens I read Brave new World (Aldous Huxley), followed shortly by Brave new World Revisited. Really showed that even back when it was written, society is slowly getting worse. Sort of made it very easy to see how it continued (and still is) to the present day.
The two fictional courtroom dramas that changed the course of my life (eventually persuading me I wanted to become a lawyer and make sure the system works towards justice) were A Few Good Men and To Kill a Mockingbird.
And even though recently things have seemed kinda bleak on the justice front in the big seats of power in the US (in the three branches of government), there’s still a million tiny ways to improve things locally, including in day to day interactions with others. So I still draw some inspiration from those ideals.
Doesn’t quite fit your specification, but George Carlin’s Class Clown (via Piped) album opened up my mind to the idea that it was okay to question religious teachings.
Children of Men. Lack of human sustainability is depressing.
Ghost in the Shell. It really changed how I seen my body, not as something that I am, but as something I control. Now I can start and stop peeing whenever I want.
Imajica by Clive Barker flipped a switch in my (then) teenage brain making me understand that “fantasy” books don’t need to have swords, wizards, and all the other tropes. That the idea of “fantasy” as a genre is far far richer than I imagined.
Same! It turned me on to the whole modern, urban, fantasy genre which is often more compelling due to being able to relate to the settings.
Going to go with a video game: Outer Wilds. The game is very story and mystery oriented, so I don’t want to spoil it, as that can ruin the experience. In short though, it’s an exploration game where you get to do your first flight around a miniature solar system - exploring it freely without a linear sequence or quest markers.
The story is told in a nonlinear way, depending on how you explore it, and the way it comes together and the conclusion it reaches were amazing to discover.
Such a fantastic game.
In his Discworld novels, Sir Terry Pratchett gave me a love for humanity. He’s so good at writing, but especially at characterization. The people he writes are just so human, and for me, it increased my empathy for people overall.
Also, even though I’m an atheist, after having grown up fundie Southern Baptist, I’d like to think that if the spiritual and supernatural exist, that it works somewhat along Discworldian lines. Certainly there are two Deaths that I wouldn’t mind meeting: The Discworld Death, and the Sandman Death (Neil Gaiman).
But it was with Pratchett’s help that I’ve come to believe that there are no good people and no bad people. Just people, and all the choices they make. Which in some ways makes “evil people” more terrifying, because I believe they make those choices. But it’s also heartening: People can choose to be better.
The principles expressed in the novels helped me change my views on what’s important: I think the most important thing you can do is to make others’ lives a little better, if you can. Huge projects like social safety nets, but even making a stranger laugh for a moment and brightening their day.
This life is all we get, and anything that makes it better is the main thing that’s worth anything at all.
The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. The ending is just chefs kiss and made me think about my Dark Tower
Dogma helped me see how absurd religion, specifically Catholicism, was and helped be begin to untangle what it all meant for me, a hyper-religious teenager at the time.
