A year in the life of William Shakespeare

Since I sometimes dedicate my scrapbook posts, a friend asked me if the sonnet I posted last night was meant for anybody special.

It was meant for me.

I was feeling sorry for myself because I'd come to the end of a book I'd been reading, A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare 1599, by James Shapiro.

I haven't been that sad to finish a book in a long time. The last time I remember was W. Jackson Bate's biography of Samuel Johnson. Bate had made me feel that I'd really come to know Johnson and walked about in his world with him and when I read of his death I cried as if I'd just received news that an old friend had died.

The only other book that affected me that much was David Copperfield, the first two times I read it.

Shakespeare is alive and well at the end of Shapiro's book, so the sadness I felt when I closed the covers wasn't akin to grief. It was like the sadness you feel when a great party comes to an end. So I posted the sonnet and then started in reading again from the beginning.

How about you? Have you ever felt that way about book?