Music:
The Shins, Iron & Wine, Bright Eyes, Postal Service, Handsome Boy Modelling School, Tricky, Massive Attack, Portishead, Tool, Broken Social Scene, Metric, Stars, Sneaker Pimps, Magnetic Fields, Grandaddy, Elliott Smith, Rilo Kiley, DJ Shadow, Blockhead, Deltron 3030, Raising the Fawn, Sunny Day realestate, etc.
Books:
Old Classics (Les Mis, Vanity Fair, etc.), Dickens novels, Indian novels (particularly Rohinton Mistry)...