THE BEST CRAZIES (according to the Penguin List)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Ken Kesey. This book made a pretty good movie, but I think it was because Jack Nicholson is a good and crazy actor.
The Diary of a Madman
Nikolai Gogol
Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys. I didn’t much care for this one, but I did read it. Click on the title to read my thoughts when I read it.
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Notes From Underground
Fyodor Dostoyevsky

BEST CRAZIES (according to Semicolon)
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Yes, I’ll agree on this one. Russian crazies are the best, anyway. It may make me sound xenophobic, but I think after reading several Russian novels and watching Russian current events for most of my life that maybe Russians themselves are half crazy. Or maybe, to paraphrase Bilbo, only half of them are half crazy, and the other half are half sane.

Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel Cervantes. Don Quixote is the Most Lovable Crazy. Of course, there is some debate as whether he was crazy or whether he was sane and the rest of us are crazy. Take your pick.

Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Here we have several choices. Most of Poe’s protagonists are a bit mad. Think: The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum. All insane–or at least driven into madness.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Toad is a bit of a megalomaniac, isn’t he? But he’s loveable, like Don Quixote.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Hannah Green. Climb inside the head of a schitzophrenic girl who hears voices and has an imaginary life you wouldn’t believe. The treatment practices in this book are bit dated as far as I am aware, but the symptoms of mental illness are described accurately and vividly, I think.