This is proving to be quite hard. There are so many titles, and different times and situations, to choose from.

So I will cheat a little, as I sometimes do, and nominate Test of the Twins, by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. For the happy few who don't know, this is a Dragonlance book. This is the book that infected me with chuunibyou, like, several years before the term was first coined.

I'm sure you understand. As a young boy I was young, and also, a boy, and therefore somewhat impressionable. I had never heard of the term 'mary-sue' nor had any idea of the dangers I was exposing myself to.

For an indeterminate amount of time, I malfunctioned. I inhaled all YA fantasy series I could lay my hands on, I roleplayed silent-yet-charismatic magical gentlemen bastards, I scribbled hourglass eyes on the margins of my textbooks, and most importantly I tried to awaken the dark powers of raging destruction that so obviously lay dormant in my ancient soul (they'll start working any time now).

Social ruination had come, and come to stay!

It didn't though. Other and better reads pulled me out of that particular abyss, but that's a story for another occasion.

And this, my friends, is how you steal a SBI share. 😎