For the first time in a long time I've felt a sense of loss after finishing a book - and all I want to do is go right back to the beginning and read it all over again. I think the last time I felt this way was when I finished the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but then that was to be expected; I grew up with the series and the characters had years and a span of more than a million words to grow on me.

But The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society was a purely whimsical find and it's been one book read (rather guiltily) over the past 4 days and I'm absolutely in love with it. I can't help but feel so extremely disappointed and sad that it was actually published posthumously; there'll never be a chance of there ever being a sequel (I think it's one of the cases where even if a sequel could very well ruin the jewel of such a book being on its own I so desperately want to find out what happened next that I don't even care anymore).

I have mentioned how much I love the Fisher Library at USyd, right? Last Friday I was at school to hand in my bioethics major essay and afterwards it was raining and I didn't have an umbrella on me so I thought, "Oh well, I guess I'll have to go to Fisher Library to while away some time", while actually being absolutely delighted but knowing that it was probably not a very good idea (self-discipline wise). I told myself I'd only browse and mentally select some volumes that I'll come back to after the exams have finished, but of course that completely flew out of my mind the minute I came across the absolutely charming cover of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.

It's actually rather sad that the shelves of books of Contemporary Literature (a name I've bestowed upon them myself. They're lumped together under Literature but that makes me think Shakespeare and Chaucer) never seem to change every time I visit. It's an absolute treasure trove and it feels rather excessive to have all to myself - perhaps I'm being self-delusionary - but in all the times I've spent up to hours thumbing through the books I've never been interrupted by another browser. Maybe it's the Dewey Decimal System that puts everyone off. When I first realised that there was fiction - and a whole lot of it at that - in Fisher Library I was determined to find where (even then I'd already fallen in love with the entire Research building of Fisher with its towering shelves of books and musty air and streaming sunlight from long narrow windows). And through some trial and error I finally did manage to figure out the rather haphazard way of cataloguing (although I admit I am indebted to whoever gave up trying to slot more recent acquisitions into the past century of literature and started up a new section altogether).

Anyway, yes, I think I might just have a really huge soft spot for historical fiction. The last book I read and absolutely loved was Amandine, and that was set against a backdrop of WWII as well. And it had a very pretty cover too in soft vintage colours... I think I'm discovering a pattern here. At least I've proven that sometimes, perhaps it's not wrong to judge a book by it's cover =P

Back to work (the chem exam was sobering) and perhaps I'll be productive enough that I can convince myself that I deserve to have some down time and start reading the book all over again.

Edit: I couldn't help but do a search on Charles Lamb in the library catalogue (seeing as he was so prominently featured) and I was so so pleased to find that Fisher does indeed house his entire collection of works - and first edition publications! And on a whim I searched up Agatha Christie and there are 338 entries - including first edition publications and just about the entire collection of her works. I'm so impressed, although I now wish I could just stay in uni forever and not do anything except stay in the library and read, read, read all day long.