I can't really recall most of the books we were told to read at school because when you're an addict you don't remember which hits you bought and which were freebies. I couldn't get enough books. I read everything in the school library over 3 years. Excepting some really naff stuff. The school got lucky when some old student died and left them his library. They had 2 cabinets full of his hobby horse interest. History and best of all .... ancient Legends. Boy did I ever give those a workout. Full sets of Nordic/Scandi Roman Greek and UK/Irish Myths and Legendary tales. Bonanza !
I was one of those kids who was absolutely shite at maths but a word wizzard. There were strict age rules as to which classes could read which books according to their 'levels'. Bugger that! I wanted the good stuff.
It was one of the few times teachers ever did me a favour. I got Mum to write me a letter asking if I could access the Legends collections which were rated 2 years ahead of my age. She explained what books I read at home etc and the English/History teacher was on board but the maths bastard said I'd be better occupied in brushing up on that. He was prevailed upon to grudgingly accede though. No amount of 'brushing up' has to this day made me comfortable with numbers, nong.
Those books had no influence on my future whatever, they were just rollicking tales.
But while they were about their gods I never saw it as that. What I learned from them (subconsciously) was the difference in 'cultural' thinking processes. The different values various cultures allocated certain traits.
I was also into Egyptian stuff to add to the 'research'. And of course the was Christian biblical fairy tales in there too.
Cultures build their gods in the image they wanna be, so what they worship is a fair indication of what motivates them.
I'm pretty sure politicians have been clued into that for a long time.
The Vikings were a fave, plain simple instinctive worship of the hard pragmatic fighters. Hard gods for hard people living hard lives.
The Romans were into sex drugs and military control, like America.
The Pommy/Irish ones were kinda spooky creepy,
The Greeks spent way too much time thinking about the structure of the problem rather than just fixing it (analysis paralysis)
The Egyptians were 'on' something.
...and the Biblical stuff was written by losers.
It's hard to find any book that doesn't have some tidbit of info we didn't know before so even reading rubbish has it's advantages.
For all the volumes I went through there are a few standouts that were lighthouses on a sea of words.'
Most of them Sci-fi. They're gaining points as events are proving them even more 'prescient' than they seemed at the time.
1984 of course, and a lot of Assimov's offerings, but if the current rush into Artificial Intelligence doesn't worry you I might suggest you read a tale by Harlen Ellison called "I have no mouth and I must scream". He wrote some weird stuff but that one springs to mind every time I see or hear A.I.
We really do NOT want to mess with research into creating a place where machines decide what is "best for us!"
