Where is my mind? A short list of fantastic novels about and/or for the discombobulated

We’re happy to inaugurate our Book Lists category with this mind-tripping list from our customer service manager, Chris Nuckols: 

• House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski: One man attempts to edit a dead blind man’s papers about a famous photojournalist’s film documenting a house with shifting dimensions. Where is the house? Where is the film? Why was a blind man writing about a film he presumably never saw? What made the claw marks on the floor of the dead man’s apartment? The answers may or may not be found in House of Leaves. The story and the book itself is a maze. As you follow the commentaries and footnotes, you will jump chapters and turn the book clockwise and counter to keep up with a text that is disorienting, frightening, humorous, and maddening. A truly imaginative work.
• Gun with Occasional Music, by Jonathan Lethem: How did you spend your Friday? Can’t remember? Wouldn’t regret it if you did? That’s the ticket. Keep taking your pills and keep the questions to a minimum. Do not stare at the talking baby. Do not raise an eyebrow at the well-dressed kangaroo. And if you happen to be Conrad Metcalf and in search of a murderer, do not let your karma run low, lest the law decide it’d be best for all concerned if you spent a few years stacked next to the peas in the freezer. Gun with Occasional Music is a mystery novel set in the near future—a very bizarre near future. It is brilliantly creative, funny, surreal, and sad.
• Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, by Haruki Murakami: Can you live a lifetime within a single thought? Two separate stories are told in one book and… in one mind? One story moves with a beat while the other flows slowly along like a stream. Neither story provides comfortable footing, but both are beautifully told and wound together into a fantastic novel. Deeply affecting.
• A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick: In the war on drugs, some agents go so deep undercover that their real identity is unknown even to their immediate superiors. One such narcotics officer deals and ingests brain-splitting Substance D as part of his cover. The officer, Fred, has been assigned to investigate a dealer named Bob Arctor, who happens to be the cover of a narc named Fred. The drugs, the assignment, and the environment all take their toll on Fred/Bob as the often humorous twists towards the tragic. A fantastic work that left me mourning the loss of the unappreciated thing—whatever that thing may be for each of us.  
• Altered Carbon, by Richard K. Morgan: Needlecast in to San Francisco, house your consciousness in a snazzy rental body and grab a room at the (Jimi) Hendrix Hotel. While you’re here, look into a “suicide” and try not to get yourself killed—at least not really killed.  You can mess up the body all you like, but if your cortical stack gets fried, you’re dead dead. An old-fashioned, tough-guy detective story dropped in front of a future-world backdrop. There are many big, brain-tugging ideas presented in this novel, which never fails to be fast, violent fun.