I recommend George Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces".
This is about comparative mythology, aka comparative story telling. He works out the core elements and common concepts that appear in story telling across cultures and time.
It opened my mind to be able to understand all kinds of storys on another level.
In school I always hated literature. It was like they tried to make me do something I just didn't understand at all. Literature was just random stories for me and all interpretation and attribution of meaning was fruitless and had I to just guess/fake it. Yea maybe my education was just bad who knows, doesn't matter now.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces changed that. Now I was open for all the literature and saw everything in a new light. I could recognize common concepts in stories and human life in general.
It also opened my mind for later Alan Watts reads on the interconnected-ness of everything. Someone already recommended Alan Watts. Which I can only approve of! I'd also like to add "The Way of Zen" and "The Book - On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are", also by Watts.
It opened my mind to be able to understand all kinds of storys on another level.
In school I always hated literature. It was like they tried to make me do something I just didn't understand at all. Literature was just random stories for me and all interpretation and attribution of meaning was fruitless and had I to just guess/fake it. Yea maybe my education was just bad who knows, doesn't matter now.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces changed that. Now I was open for all the literature and saw everything in a new light. I could recognize common concepts in stories and human life in general.
It also opened my mind for later Alan Watts reads on the interconnected-ness of everything. Someone already recommended Alan Watts. Which I can only approve of! I'd also like to add "The Way of Zen" and "The Book - On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are", also by Watts.
(self-copy from previous similar discussions)