Wind-Up Bird

Besides several of the thousands of books I devoured as a child I can only think of one book that has affected me to my very being in my adult life. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. It has become one layer of my core and occasionally things happen that strike that part of me.
During the school year I'm far too busy to do any serious reading - I have too many other things I like to do. (I can read of course, and I'm not saying you can't read out of doors...) but I hope to read this book again soon.
It's like that learning feeling you get when you stand back and see exactly how much you have learned in a definite space of time. I've grown and changed, perhaps only slightly, but I'm sure a re-reading of this book will make those changes seem immense. I look forward to that feeling.

Here is one of my favorite bits from the book:

"Here's what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird," said May Kasahara. "Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it. Of course, the problem could be that I'm not explaining it very well, but I think it's because they're not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they're not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things."