Books

So firstly: Sherlock Holmes short stories
My first item and I've already broken the rule by mentioning a genre unto itself nearly, rather than a book. Still, I think this qualifies, and I'm writing this, so I'll give myself permission to use it. I couldn't pick just one, I have yet to read one I didn't enjoy every last word of.

When I was young and teachers and people would ask who my role model was or who I looked up to, I never had an answer. I didn't consciously have anyone I considered a role model, or that I wanted to be like. I always said that a person ought to simply decide what was good to be and work towards internalizing those traits, and decide what was bad, and work towards conquering them. I don't think a person ought to entirely look up to anyone, because we're all less than perfect, and instead should keep more abstract goals in mind.

However, if I had to name a name for a role model for myself, or someone who I wish I was more like, it's got to be Sherlock Holmes, and for the very same reasons that make the stories about him so interesting and enthralling. I wish I could say I liked him because I was like him, but I think it's more that I'm a little bit like him, but even more he's a lot like what I'd like to be. He is first and foremost a logician, a master of rational deduction and crystal clear thought. No detail escapes him, and every detail that could lead to a conclusion is carefully and scientifically considered. He doesn't like to waste time with trivial things, and in fact is bored all of the time, always seeking out a mystery to entertain his mind.

Sherlock Holmes is, in many ways, what I like to think I'm developing towards. Like all good archetypes, it's probably unreachable and I'll never be exactly like him (I have yet to even touch a violin, for example) but I love to think that I have some similar traits and that they're not yet nearly at their peak. I love to dream that my own abilities at logically coming to conclusions based on the pure facts and reason are but still growing. I love to think that maybe I'm sort of a lesser Holmes, not seeking out mysteries and giving Scotland Yard a run for its money, but on a less public level, using the same basic logical processes to decide things for myself, and for analyzing the world around me. I can't help but love any literary character that makes me sit back and say "I wish I were exactly like him". Except for the cocaine use, anyway.

2001: A Space Odyssey
This book is the very definition of good science fiction. It is not about ray guns and space aliens, it is about people. Technology is not the story, it's the setting. It's not a western set in the future, it's literature. This is the book that made me want to read anything and everything that Arthur C. Clarke ever wrote, even if it was just a multiple choice quiz he had in grade school.

It is, quite literally, the story of our entire history as a species, and our entire future. More specifically, a fictional account of our beginnings, and a very realistic and interesting interpretation of humankind's relationship with our tools, our technology. It's the story of technology's affect on us as a species, from the time the first caveman-like creature found that he could use a bone as a club, to the time in the future when we possibly "out grow" our tools, and become something else entirely.

For those that have seen the movie - there are some things here that can't be entirely conveyed in a film. I'd really recommend reading the story as well, especially if not everything made sense. Like that acid trip of an ending, for instance.

1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451
These three really ought to be read as a group, because they all are essentially variations on a theme - government totalitarianism, control of populations, and what it means to be free. I expect most people that have done much reading at all have read 1984, as I believe it's required reading at many high schools (it wasn't at mine, though), but if you haven't, you should. The more time goes by, the more frightening the book is.

Brave New World is another variation on the aforementioned themes, focusing more on even more drastic class stratification than in 1984, having the fetuses of each person deliberately stunted or enhanced according to the caste they'll be in. A touch of genetic engineering, a bit of subliminal brainwashing, and constant social re-enforcement all combine to produce a laboring caste that wouldn't dream of doing anything else, an intellectual class that wouldn't dare consider anything else, and so on. And for when that doesn't work, well, "a gramme is better than a damn".

Fahrenheit 451 is more focused on the repression of ideas and speech. Guy Montag is a fireman, in a world where firemen set fires, rather than put them out. Simply put, they burn the writings of all dissenting ideas. Where 1984 takes a more varied approach, Fahrenheit nearly exclusively addresses the issues of free speech, and the freedom of expression.

Ishmael
I think the thing I liked most about Ishmael was the way that whether or not I agreed with the author (Daniel Quinn), it made me question basic assumptions about culture and society that may never have come to mind to question in the first place, and that alone makes it worth reading. It's an interesting look at our global culture, and is up there with 1984 and other books that just are important to have read at some point.

Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy single-handedly made me want to read every major Russian novel of the late 19th century with this book. I think it embodies a lot of what I think any great work of fiction should encompass - multiple interesting characters with complex personalities for one. Multiple parallel story lines that go apart and interact at key points, keeping things together and coherent, yet providing for a plot that isn't flat and uninteresting. It gave me a character that I immediately could identify with, and sort of cheer for when he succeeded, and emphasize with when he failed. Most importantly with characters, it provided situations that weren't clear cut at all, and gave the reader an opportunity to dissect the situation, rather than just shoving an obvious "good guy" and "bad guy" in front of you.