John Kennedy Toole's
A Confederacy of Dunces --
My ultimate, all-time, favorite, most influential book of forever and beyond. Spending time with Ignatius J. Reilly, the protagonist, and his outrageous "worldview" would help anyone to define their own.
Douglas Hofstadter's
Godel, Escher, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid --
Anyone who wishes to dabble in math, science, computers, art, music, or philosophy will be able to find something here. A true feast for a logical mind. From the author:
Quote:
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In a word, GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is self and how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone or a puddle? What is an "I", and why are such things found (at least so far) only in association with... certain kinds of gooey lumps encased in hard shells mounted atop mobile pedistals that roam around the world on pairs of slightly fuzzy, jointed stilts?
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Douglas Adam's
Hitchhiker "trilogy" --
The utter absurdity of these books helped to shape my deliciously twisted sense of humor.
Ayn Rand's
Anthem --
Similar in philosophy to
Altas Shrugged and
Fountainhead, but much easier to digest. Heavily influenced my political views. (Did you know that Ayn Rand was a founding member of the Libertarian party?)
J.R.R. Tolkien's
The Hobbit --
The first fantasy book I ever read. Without this book, I would have missed out on such enriching tales as
Lord of the Rings,
The Silmarillion, the Harry Potter series, the works of Terry Pratchett, and Frank Herbert's
Dune series.