Are there any stories, perhaps a fairy tale, a cartoon, a ballad, where the story seems fundamentally important to you? Something you are fascinated by, want to write your own version of, always compare other stories too? For myself, Beauty and the Beast seems to underlie a lot of what I write. Mulan, Lord of the Flies, Ender's Game, and The Clan of the Cave Bear are some others which strike me as very important. I generally only read books once, occasionally twice, so if I find myself reading something for a third time that's usually a clue that my subconscious thinks there's something important hidden in there. Later I will post talking about myth analysis - how to do a comparative analysis of several of stories to figure out which of their ingredients are important to you and which aren't. But for now I'd like everyone to list the stories that are important to them. If one is important to a lot of people I'll analyze that one as an example. [smile]

I'm glad you phrased it like that - there are a lot of stories that really strike me, and that really seem important to me... but that I can't quite quantify.

Wicked, and its predecessor, the Wizard of Oz, The Dig, Into the Out of (both by Alan Dean Foster), Jarhead, and the Foundation Series. For that matter, Ender's Game should be in that list, as well as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Alice in Wonderland (Through the Looking Glass, anyone?). In that order, really.

Really, I just fall in love with characters, but these also/only struck me for their stories. Now I'm curious to see what it is, really, that draws me to some of these diverse stories.

Well, I would say that "The Matrix" saga brings up a few points of my concern... like reality and what we percieve as reality, the pourpose of life, faith, predestination, materialism, mass_control/submission, sacrifice, etc.

Fight Club (I mean the book).

Grapes of Wrath.

Breakfast of Champions.

The Dubliners.

-In no particular order:

The Call
The Princess' Bride(Book)
Piercing the Darkness/This present Darkness
Harry Potter
Narnia: A Horse and His Boy/Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Hobbit
Skylark Series
Lensman Series
Isaac Asimov's short storys
John Grisham Novels (particularly The Client)

-People seem to be mentioning movies also, so here: (Also in no order)

The first Matrix(Only the first)
Boondock Saints
Snatch
Usual Suspects
The Princess' Bride(Movie)
Bandits
Italian Job
Ocean's Eleven
Broken Arrow
Diehard 1 & 3
Fiddler on the Roof
Office Space
The Boiler Room

Harry Potter is an interesting one - doesn't resonate with me in particular, but is hugely popular with many people. I'd be curious to know what elements of it are important, besides the basic idea of having magical powers and going to a magical boarding school. Personally I find the sorting hat and personality-type houses interesting, but I doubt most people would consider that particularly important.

I really like the Harry Potter series, but not in this way. They're good movies, and better books, but I didn't find any real story elements that hit me.

In my opinion, JK Rowlings isn't the best writer around, but she did create a great world. At first she had it a more comical series, but as the books got popular, she tried to make it darker. I feel the main reason the books are popular is that she happened to pick the right settings at the right time. Westerns were famous, then they weren't, magic and knight's adventures were the main setting, then they weren't. The majority's favorite settings swing around wildly in jumps about every five-ten years, and JK Rowling happened to write what came to her, and scored big.
A more important question, I think, is why are fictional movies, books, and games popular at all? Why do we want fiction instead of fact? It's not that fact isn't interesting, you can find many great time killers, reading about the rise and fall of empires, or the history of a 'normal' man who accomplished some great feat; I think fiction is interesting because we long to be adventurous, and risk danger, because we want more than what we have, we know there is more to life, more than we can feel and see.

Eh.. I'm getting off-topic now, so I'll stop straying from the question at hand. JK Rowling happened to hit the majority public's interest before anyone else realized what the public wanted. That's my opinion.

Fiction allows us things that we want but don't or can't have in real life. That's more than enough reason for me.

//edit. I also love non-fiction, I just wanted to say why I like fiction.

[Edited by - Avatar God on May 24, 2006 3:04:43 AM]

hmmm... books that are important to me... difficult one...

Probably those by Terry Pratchett and Bernard Werber's ANTS trilogy. I like that whirling storytelling you can also find in Guy Ritchie's movies like Snatch or Lock, Stock... I just can't stop watching those movies, or reading those books. I always come back to them, like old friends...

There is also a graphic series (I just can't resolve myself to use the words 'comic books' since it is essentially dramatic) the Third Testament. I like the way the reader is drawn to side with the main character until the penultimate page, where you learn that he is the antechrist, and the secondary character has to kill him. I like stories that do NOT end well. Maybe Braveheart or Gladiator, to some extent. But I'd rather have the main character be a loner trying desperately to regain his place in society, rather than seeking revenge, and ultimately accept to loose everything so that society remains...

Ender's strategy, and shadow strategy are two examples of what I also like, in terms of political intrigue, and second guessing.

I also like Cryptonomicon's precision and involvement. The writer tries desperately to make the reader follow the mental process of some mathematical and cryptographic geniuses, but at the same time, makes his characters completely touching and loveable, even though there are completely uncommon. I also liked his Zodiac.