By "Must read" list, I don't necessarily mean just books. I mean pieces of artistic legacy which have, regardless of their original quality or merit, gone on to influence later art and hold a place in Western popular cultural memory.
The sorts of pieces I am looking for are pieces that, while not necessarily the best pieces of art themselves, but improve and enhance later art if you know about them.
For example - Star Wars, love it as I do, is not the greatest film. It's Space Opera. That said, how much of current pop cultural reference flies over your head because you haven't seen it? What about Citizen Kane's "Rosebud"? Charlie Chaplin's "Little Tramp"?
To go further, what about the masked characters of Commedia Dell'Arte? or Botticelli's the Birth of Venus?
So, much like the Smithsonian's Anthology of of American Folk Music, I think it would be cool to put together an Anthology of Western Pop Culture.
Related: NetHack.
Nethack added ASCII graphics and 'rogue' elements to the text game world. A 'roguelike' game has 'procedural level generation, turn-based gameplay, tile-based graphics, permanent death, and typically based on a high fantasy narrative setting.' Emphasis on permanent death. Nethack didn't invent rogue, but it's easily the most popular early roguelike. The Binding of Isaac and FTL are recent popular (non-textual) roguelikes.
Here's the grand-daddy of all those type of games - Colossal Cave (usually just called "Adventure") : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure
My favourite of this genre was Infocom's "Leather Goddesses of Phobos", which came with a 3-D comic book.
I always remember this game because there was a copy of it on the Unix system at the first programming job I ever had (around 1986?), and someone had hacked it so that in one of the early rooms, where it normally says "There is a dead orc here", it now said "The is a dead Joe Blow here", where "Joe Blow" was the name of a particularly dickish engineer who worked there - his real name I will keep to myself.
I've never seen. I wonder how much I've missed?
I have a vague recollection of this. maybe thenewgreen knows? or mk?
looks like where it links to, https://thcnet.net/zork/index.php , might be dead.
I'm an artist so I'll post some art while I think about movies and books
The Mona Lisa I guess, Vitruvian Man because it's less boring and I bet you didn't know its name
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte by Georges Seurat
Dogs Playing Poker by C.M. Coolidge
Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol He also coined the term "15 minutes of fame." "(In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.")
The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali Betcha didn't know that title either and if you did you probably still didn't know it's about his dick.
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living by Damien Hirst Just kidding. I can't stand Damien Hirst even if I'm trying to be objective here.
Liberty Leading the People by Delacroix
The cave paintings at Lascaux, France
The Guggenheim Museum by Frank Lloyd Wright
The Sydney Opera House by Jørn Utzon
The Eiffel Tower by an architect whose name escapes me
Lavender Mist by Jackson Pollock because regardless of your appreciation or ability to name any of his individualworks, you should know who the drip painting guy is
And Marge vs. the Monorail, episode 9F10 from the Simpsons, written by Conan O'Brien.
Kinda burnt myself out on timeless the cultural landmarks so The Simpsons is my only pop culture contribution.
Before anyone asks me if I'm illiterate, most of those are well known enough to have crossed over into the realm of pop culture in that they're quoted in TV and movies. Except Hirst.
- Vitruvian Man because it's less boring and I bet you didn't know its name
Ah, you underestimate me. I know it specifically because of this bass:
http://lamario.ca/lamario2009-contrebasse.php?lang=fr
well, that and I'm a nerd.
edit: to your art posts, I would add M. C. Escher's "Ascending and Descending', which shows up in so many places.
Robert A. Heinlein. I grew up on my father's Heinlein juveniles. He started writing a decade before the Space Race, and kept the dream alive long after politicians stopped looking up.
- for really important ones
- Birth of a Nation (understand what it influenced not its actual quality), - Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, Frankenstein, Promises!Promises! (BOOBS), Good, Bad, and the Ugly,
- Bonnie and Clyde (first of new hollywod), - Easy Riders (first mainstream new hollywood), Last Picture Show, The French Connection, Dirty Harry, Clockwork Orange, Willy Wanka and the Chocolate Factory, The Godfather, The Exorcist, American Graffiti, Chinatown, The Godfather 2, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Young Frankenstein , - Jaws (Spielberg's start, first of the 80's era movie style), Monty Python and the Holy Grail, taxi driver, rocky, close encounters of the third kind, - star wars (end of new hollywood), Alien, superman, grease, Apocalypse Now,
- The Shinning, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., BladeRunner, Poltergiest, Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back., Scarface, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Gremlins, Karate Kid, Terminator, Ghostbusters, The Breakfast Club, The Goonies, Beverly Hills Cop, Back to the Future, Ferris Bueller's day off, Aliens, Labyrinth, The Princess Bride, Beetlejuice, - Die Hard, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, - Batman, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
Home Alone, Edward Scissorhands, Goodfellas, Silence of the Lambs, - Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Reservoir Dogs, - Jurassic Park, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Schindler's List, Forest Gump, Clerks, - Pulp Fiction, Seven, Toy Story, The Usual Suspects, Heat, Fargo, Titanic, Good Will Hunting, the Big Lebowski, Fight Club, American Beauty, Being John Malkovich, Star Wars: Phantom Menace, - The Matrix,
Memento, Monsters Inc, Kill Bill 1, Kill Bill 2, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Shawn of the Dead, primer, Serinity, V for Vandetta, The Prestige, No Country for Old Men, Inglorious Bastards, Avatar,
Lord of the Rings 1-3, Dark Knight Trilogy, Harry Potter 1-7.5, Twilight (understand not like), - MCU: Iron man - Avengers age of Ultron, xmen: xmen-Days of Future Past,
inception, the social network, Kick ass, wolf of Wall street, Argo,
I would agree with Star Wars. I'd add to it the Indiana Jones films.
The Beatles entire catalog. The Beastie Boys -License to Ill the Muppet Show.
Game of thrones is starting.... More later.
I'm gonna go with the first things that spring to mind:
The bible. Or maybe just the gospels, and genesis through to the end of 2 Chronicles (skipping leviticus and numbers).
Paul Simon's Graceland.
The Brothers Karamazov.
Bambi.
Bowie's greatest hits.
The land before time.
The Goonies.
LOTR. books and films.
Chronicles of Narnia. just the books.
Jumanji.