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One of the previous posts mentioned that it changes for them frequently, and I'm pretty much the same way. But for right now: Fiction: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Non-Fiction: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Freudian theory really was just a way to psychoanalyze Freud and his complexes.
Lacan jettisoned the weirdly specific Freudian stuff and had a more general template, with a focus on the relationship between language and the subconcious.
Godel Escher Bach is the best book I've read. Very interesting topics and the sheer creativity of the writing is amazing.
(You can see it for yourself in all it's glory here: https://www.wholeearth.info/p/the-next-whole-earth-catalog-f... )
Other than that I'd have to say the Tao Te Ching.
(The best fiction book I've read is almost certainly "The Book of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe. It's in the league of Tolkien and Dune.)
It’s kind of cliche for a white male nerd of a certain age, but it has stuck with me. How imaginative the book is, the huge mix of characters and stories in the book, and the style of writing are incredible. The pace of interesting ideas is very fast and engrossing, and the language used to describe things is complex but not overly so.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"the way things work", the book with all the woolly mammoths in it. Learned a lot from it
That is the literal pillar; physically and figuratively the foundation, of my knowledge corpus; aptly the bottom book in my corner-turned-library. I spent hours as a kid, slowly parsing, contextualizing, researching every iota and minutiae of that book. I had an encyclopedia just to help supplement that book.
The truth is, if you ask me this 100 times, you'll probably get 100 different answers, because it's impossible to really pick just one (well two, separating by fiction/non-fiction). But for today I'll go with: Fiction: Neuromancer Non-fiction: The Selfish Gene
Came to say The Selfish Gene for nonfiction. Changed the way I thought about things.
The book is fractally intricate and intellectually puzzling in the best sense—something new and special to notice every time you pick it up.
But it also wears like old leather, and I find myself returning to favorite chapters simply to sink indulgently into the characters, dialog, and setting.
Anybody who says no one has actually read Ulysses is unknowingly half-right: You can certainly get to a point where you’ll never finish reading it.