Music:
Too eclectic for a Nick Hornby list here. Love those mash-up compilations (e.g. DJ Muggs Mash-up Radio Vol 1) - willbullettrain can supply some thumping bootlegs 'under the counter' in anonymous brown paper bags.
Movies:
Lost in Translation; Blue Velvet; Manhattan Murder Mystery; Donnie Darko; The Lady Killers; Miller's Crossing/Barton Fink (two very different stylised Cohen bros flicks); American Beauty; North by Northwest; Metropolis; Vertigo; any slapstick farce with a straight-faced Leslie Nielsen - Airplane, Naked Gun etc..., Goodfellas; China Town; Young Frankensien; Being John Malkovich; Delicatessen, la Dolce Vita,... and Star Wars
Books:
Herge's adventures of Tintin, Chinua Achebe, Jonathan Coe, William Boyd, Milan Kundera, Coetzie, Orwell (esp. Homage to Catalonia and Down and out...), Will Self, Jean Rhys, Toni Morison, Simon Armitage, Graham Green, Pamuk, le Petit Prince.