Madame Bovary
By Gustave Flaubert

I was probably supposed to read this book when I studied literature at university, but I spent a lot of time playing pool and wound up picking it up for the first time last year when I moved to America and put myself on a self-improvement program. It's the portrait of a young wife in provincial France who's dissatisfied with her life and her husband, whom she deems dull and crusty. Eventually, she becomes intoxicated and humiliated by another man. I've always identified with someone who has fallen for the impossibly sexy man and finds it all going horribly wrong.