The best book I've ever read was called "Of Human Bondage" by Somerset Maugham. I have advised and still recommend this book to all my friends. She is gorgeous. It is about a person, his experience and about art! If you want to understand how a great artist differs from a simple one, then the author will describe it to you very clear and with irony.
The rest of my five: Flowers for Algernon, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, En man som heter Ove. I adore each of them and am ready to read them many, many times!