You know how sometimes you read a book and you're like HEY AUTHOR GET OUT OF MY HEAD? Yeah. That thing.

Ever been just minding your own business, enjoying a good book, when you realized the author has clearly been stalking you? Or perhaps even tapped your phones? Or implanted a microchip in your brain?

You're like, holy crap, how the frick did you know that about me? Because, there is no way that moment could have been captured without a direct link into your cerebellum.

Yeah. It's a little unnerving. But it's also kind of cool. It's one of the best things about books, really.

One of the books that does that for me is HIGH FIDELITY by Nick Hornby. It was one of the first books that I connected to as a young adult, even though it's not a YA book and it's totally about thirty-somethings. What does this say about me? Well, there's the fact that the narrator has a certain sense of self-importance, worked in a record store, and defined his life in terms of the pop culture around him. He made top-five lists (I used to make top-tens obssessively), mix tapes (check), and big mistakes in his relationships (oh yeah). And, okay, he was totally a dude, but he got me. Nick Hornby got me.

I still go back to that book as a home base. I look at passages and smile. I'm still angry at one of the characters. I'm still nostalgic for Championship Vinyl. And I watch the movie that was based on the book as if I'm sitting down with friends. It's just that cool.

What books feel like that to you? Is there anything that just boggled your mind when you read it, like the author might even be yourself in a parallel universe? I need to know. Because, apparently, I've been exactly like a 34-year-old, male record shop owner since I was about 19.