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Has “world’s oldest” replaced “world’s greatest” in the D&D marketing lingo, or was that a cheeky touch?

IIRC Algernon Blackwood was mentioned by James Jacobs as worthy reading.

Ah yes, two of his works made it onto the 1e inspiring reading that I mentioned. “The Wendigo”, and “The Willows”.

It's definitely a tough one, but I'm alright with turning this into a "Paizo Boards Book Club" since I have a stack of books waiting for me to devour that I will never find the time for. There is a bit of a "depend how deeply you read into things" when it comes to recommendations, because I have found myself getting inspired from some of the strangest places. Anyway, here are a few more, and I'll try and keep away from super broadly well known books, but not sure how well I can pull that off.

Pretty much anything by Haruki Murakami is going to tickle the part of your brain when it comes to bizarre, surreal worldbuilding. The much beloved 1Q84 (the pun of this title doesn't work so well in English) is a tale of alternate worlds, murder-for-hire, loss, and loneliness. Big recommend, but it's also a massive novel. If you still want some strangeness without the huge commitment of the novel, I like Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World which is really just an amazing romp into modern fantasy. Truly, you can't go wrong with Murakami.

At work, but I may have more later! Non-Murakami books. Promise.

Haha, seems like you’re a pretty big fan!

I’ve noticed that the most obvious inspirations are stories that are, essentially, fantasy in tone if not substance.
Spies, detectives, gunslingers, even outside of fantasy tend to evoke worlds and characters alien to our everyday lives, big emotions, and frequently exaggerate the historical settings to make them more romanticized (or horrifying, depending on the work).
But on the other hand (as you said), subtext opens up a whole new world of unexpected inspiration.
That was kind of the exact thought I had regarding Lord of the Flies- at least Les Miserables has that Galt connection, but I didn’t expect the famous book about kids isolated on a beach to make me think about what I did.

Anyways, feel free to include some famous works too.
I’ll admit I wasn’t much of a reader during high school/my freshman year (video games and comics were more my thing at the time), so it’s only now that I’m rediscovering my childhood love of paper and pages.
As an unfortunate consequence, I’m fairly certain that there are some pretty big works that would fail to cross my mind.

That's a fairly broad question for which there are hundreds and thousands of answers. Golarion is one of those worlds that tends to contain just about any sort of setting that you could want. If it's alright, I'd like to see if we could narrow down the scope of the question.

What sorts of stories do you like to tell as a GM/player? Do you prefer to get really gritty and base a lot of your adventures around events that could plausibly happen in the real world? Do you prefer a more outlandish and fantastical story with its own set of internal rules and laws? Also, what sorts of stories have inspired you in the past or are you drawn to?

As a quick recommend for "general fantasy storytelling" without being in the genre of fantasy, I think "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is a fantastic read and is a good well to tell a story of fantastical wonder that is grounded in reality while being wildly untethered from it.

I’ll look into that, thanks!

Well, I’m honestly comfortable with a bit of anything to tell the truth. I’m currently running a daemon/undead heavy dark fantasy campaign, but I’ve enjoyed previously running a highjinks and whimsy heavy “spies, swashbuckling, and wizards” adventure.
Depends on what me and my players are in the mood for.

As for the past, definitely the ones I mentioned reading from the 1e list, as well as more typical fantasy and science fiction influences (ASOIF, Tolkien, Saga, The Witcher, the Order of the Stick, Dragon Age, Dracula, The Dark Tower, the Stand, Dune, and so on and so on.
It was the unexpected surprise of Lord of Flies, Les Miserables, etc being so detached from fantasy, yet proving to be very inspiring for that medium nonetheless that made me write this post.

So I guess I’m asking from the point of view of a “buyer” who doesn’t know what they’re actually looking for.
All I know is that it’s *very* easy to search for good genre books (fantasy, horror, science fiction), but a whole other to search for “great books that aren’t genre fare, yet almost inexplicably leave you with good ideas for running a fantasy tabletop game”
Sorry, that’s uh, not very helpful.

I think it can also depend on which part of the setting you want to focus on. If you want to do a lot with the Pathfinder Society, lost world stories and adventure novels are the way to go. Weird West for Alkenstar, gothic horror for Ustalav, cosmic horror and sci-fi horror for the Dominion of the Black.

I’m thinking of using the Society in the immediate term, likely in Avistan or Casmarom; though ever since Guns and Gears I’ve been hoping to eventually run a Weird West style adventure too, yeah.

It sounds like you're trying to be inspired for GM purposes, right? I think there are probably different materials you'd want for player characters.

GMing, yes.

I noticed that back in 1e, Les Misérables, Lord of the Flies, the Fall of the House of Usher, and fantasy-adjacent Macbeth were on the inspiring reading list.
While some of them initially seemed like curious choices, I definitely found that they helped me expand my writing style away from more typical fantasy narratives in my 2e campaign.
And considering how 2e has in general arguably an even more eclectic series of influences, I’ve been thinking about what other non fantasy works I should read to get into the headspace for writing in the setting?

Pathfinder 2E is so big and diverse it'd be kind of impossible to do an inspirational media list for it without leaving something/someone out or even-misadvertising the types of content at play. Guns & Gears alone drew inspirations from a laundry list of anime, American shows animated and otherwise, Filipino media, video games, historical events, novels, and the game's own unique history. Consider the number of people credited as writers, designers, developers, creative directors, etc. in any given book and then factor in that they each have their own bucket of inspirations, and the scope of the thing becomes such that accurately listing everything would make the game look much less intentional and specific than it is, while leaving things out could do a huge injustice to a source that had a meaningful impact on the game.

Stephen-Radney McFarland used to say (probably still does, he's not dead, I just don't work with him anymore, lol) "Fantasy is a language." Like a language it grows and evolves over time and with new speakers, and also like a language it has lots of regional dialects influenced by a wide variety of factors. The real source inspiration for Pathfinder2e is that language itself, as understood and spoken by all the people who contribute to the game.

I understand the line of thinking in this explanation, but I respectfully disagree with the conclusion to remove them.

Looking outward would be treating the inspirational media blocks as sharing key bits of developer inspiration from different aspects of the game; not for the purpose of citing, but better nudging along players and GMs in finding relevant material to find them.

I won’t deny that part of my OCD is a fixation with lists, so I have something of a bias towards these collections; but I also think that there is genuine worth in saying to beginners “here, these are great places to get started in our various subgenres, go get inspired”.

I would certainly include the Witcher, since those games were my primary inspiration for the first version of the alchemist back in the day.

Oh cool! (And the more I think back on the mutagens and bombs of the 1e alchemist, the more that makes sense, haha)

Golarion can be a little tough to do general inspirations for, because it’s such a patchwork - the Realm of the Mammoth Lords, Numeria, the Mwangi Expanse, and Osirion are all rarically different vibes, just as examples.

I don’t think most of the media on those lists were intended as general settingwide inspirations- Doom, Dead Space, Dragonriders of Pern (Starfinder), The Shining, The Hellbound Heart, and The Time Machine (Pathfinder), are mostly reflected in regionalized/specific ways.

While Horror Adventures and the 1e core rulebook covered print sources fabulously, there has never (to my knowledge) been a Pathfinder equivalent to Starfinder’s video game/tabletop section for inspirational media- and there were some fascinating and obscure picks on that one (Aerannis in particular).
I’m also curious if The Witcher video games would’ve been included in a hypothetical 2e inspirational media, as the original books were never named as inspirations in either of 1e’s sections.