The Nervous Breakdown discussion

No particular order.

This is tough.
Sometimes A Great Notion by Kesey
The Memory of Old Jack by Wendell Berry
Machine Dreams by Jayne Anne Phillips
Other Voices, Other Rooms by Capote
Miles From Nowhere by Nami Mun
Top Five Oldies
Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Dombey & Son by Dickens
Notes From Underground by Dostoevsky
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Tempest by Willy S.

The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western
The Code of the Woosters
Ficciones
Austerlitz
Portrait of a Man Unknown

Snow White by Donald Barthelme
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
Grendel by John Gardner
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Engineer of Human Souls by Josef Skvorecky

@Miranda, Kundera was first on my list for many years!

Miranda wrote: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being
BUtterfield 8
Lolita
A Sport and A Pastime
The Great Gatsby"

Miranda,

We have a lot in common taste-wise. Besides adoring Paris (I'll assume) and Shakespeare and Company, I also count The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Great Gatsby as two of my all time favorite novels. I haven't read UBLOB in a long while, might be time to revisit.

Blindness - Saramago
The Mysterious Island - Verne
The Road - McCarthy
Banned For Life - Haney
Death of an Ordinary Man - Duncan

Heart of Darkness
The Stranger
Lila Says
The Sheltering Sky
Let It Come Down

Top favorites? five? This is like being asked to express my soul in three words or less. Thanks again, Brad Listi.:)

The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner for inspiring the 15 year old me to write and be in love with writing for it's own sake.

Brave New World, for inspiring my 13 year old self to think.

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie for inspiring me to consider history in a magical light.

Franny and Zooey by J.D Salinger for helping my 19 year old self feel less alone.

The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke for inspiring me to "speak" from my soul.

Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone
Light In August - Faulkner
Spring Snow - Mishima
The English Patient - Ondaatje
The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald

(Hi, I'm new.)

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon
(those three I reread probably once a year)

The last two in these sorts of lists are always hard. So these are subject to change:

The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
Everything Will Be All Right by Tessa Hadley

Sportswriter, Blood Meridian, Infinite Jest, Lucky Jim, Crime and Punishment