lacrimae rerum

Shelving duty in the Nanyang JC Library always gets me all hot and bothered. ;P My heart goes at a million beats a second and my breathing is short and fast and I keep going, "Oh!", "Oh my God!" and "Wow!" and squealing softly.

Get your minds out of the gutter. I simply get [very] excited at the sheer selection of books the library has. Books which I had given up on finding, like Dante's Divine Comedy, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the Sandman series (which I have raved about at length already) and Gaiman's other works, Chaucer, Arthur Conan Doyle's complete works, stuff like Lolita and Emma and a whole bunch of other classics I thought I'd never find.

I want to read almost all the books I shelf/rearrange/simply take out and trace the spine and titles and smile before replacing them, and I've only got two years here and a whole lot of schoolwork. XP Ah well.

I found a very good translation of the first two parts of Dante's Divine Comedy, Inferno and Purgatorio, in the 800s shelf, Reference - English Literature (yes, I know that one by heart, along with a few others). XP I finished Inferno on the 25th of April, I think, it was really good! However, truthfully, I was expecting something even more darker. Demons called Evilclaws, with names like Eviltail? Good Omens fanfic and role-play and stuff has spoilt me, I guess.  Professor Anthony Esolen's translation is beautiful, though. I tried a Penguin edition first and it was so dry, then I picked up this translation and fell in love. I'm currently in the midst of his translation of Purgatorio, which is just as beautiful. And the Gustave Dore illustrations - gorgeous. Unfortunately, they don't have the Esolen translation of Paradiso, so I'll have to borrow a different translation. I flipped through it and it's nice but not as good as Professor Esolen's.

And last Tuesday, while on shelving duty, I found a copy of Eoin Colfer's The Wish List. It was in the wrong place (between two 'CIL's instead of with the 'COL's) so I pulled it out to shelf it correctly. I paused when I saw the cover, which had cool-looking bright flames licking it. I instantly thought, "Ooh, Hell!" (I know, weird, but I am a Good Omens fan.) and turned it to look at the blurb on the back. The moment I saw the words Heaven and Hell in the line Meg's soul is up for grabs as Heaven and Hell try every sneaky trick imaginable to claim it, I was all, "I'M BORROWING THIS!". I flipped it open at a random page and saw the name 'Beelzebub'. I was all, "Okay, I am DEFINITELY borrowing this!"

I borrowed it and have read it twice. XP It has Beelzebub in a kaftan arguing with a demon who was once a Japanese computer programmer, and Saint Peter being snarky, and Beelzebub and Saint Peter making sneaky phone calls to each other because of their mutual arrangement. ;P How could any Good Omens fan not enjoy that?! :D

Here's an excerpt that had me laughing out loud. 

  The lift doors dinged open. Belch stepped in gingerly, half-expecting some collapsing trapdoor - ha ha you're not really going back at all - type of thing. But no, just solid floor. carpeted with some pinkish hairy material. Better not to think about that.
  
  "How long have I got? To make her bad."

  Beelzebub shrugged. "It depends. Take it easy on the possessions, don't call home too often, and you've got enough juice for a week."

  Belch whined.

  "Any problems, check the virtual help. Myishi assures me every eventuality is covered."

  "OK, boss," said Belch compliantly, thinking that he'd be off like a bullet as soon this lift spat him out on planet Earth. Sayonara hell, and farewell stumpy demon in the girly dress.

  "It's a kaftan," said Beelzebub coolly.

  "Woof," croaked Belch. Seemingly, his quadruped side dominated in times of stress.

   "That's right," continued hell's Number Two. "I can read minds. Only weak ones, granted, but you're smack bang in the middle of that category. Don't even think about escape, because the second your life force runs out you'll be snapped back here like a pooch on an elstic leash."

  "Right."

  Beelzebub primed his trident for a level-four whammy. Very nasty. "And you know I can't let you off with that girly dress crack, don't you?"

  Belch shook a shaggy head. "Arf arf."

  "My thoughts exactly," grinned the demon, jabbing his buzzing staff into Belch's expectant skin.

xD Beelzebub in a girly dress kaftan.  Now I'm imagining the lt_safe_house role-play's Beelzebub (apocryphalwords) in a kaftan. I think SH's Belial (lordofthesouth) would be more suited to one, though. He'd make it look drop-dead sexy. Come to think of it, he'd probably just drop it and be sexy. He is, after all, the embodiment of the temptation of the Seven Deadly Sins and Prince of Seductions (credits for this info go to the lovely apocryphal_muse, who plays both these demons and pointed out my mistake when I initially listed him as the Archdemon of Lust).

There's more hilarious stuff I wanna quote from The Wish List, like one of the calls between Peter and Beelzebub, and Peter being a litttle unangelic and sneaky, but this is pretty long already and I'm TIRED. Went to bed around 1 AM cos of my aunt's birthday dinner, woke up at 5.30AM to get ready and rush to school to catch the chartered bus bringing 12 students to Dunman High for an absolutely riveting lecture on The Cold War in Asia, Focusing On South-East Asia. >_<  I think I must've been out of my mind when I signed up. I haven't had a proper Saturday, when I can wake up so late that my breakfast is eaten at lunch time, in aaaages, since school started. :(

So. Hopefully I can quote the other funny stuff another time. :D