A question on reading novels

I don't know if I am off-topic talking about READING novels instead of writing.

I recently finished Patricia Reilly Giff's "Lily's Crossing", and I absolutely loved it. It was very moving and touching, and I was emotionally affected by it a great deal.

Now here's the problem: when I finished, I felt like I had awoken from a dream, a very good one, and I have that really empty feeling in me. I had spent so much time journeying with the two characters in the imaginative world, and the imaginary world was just so wonderful. Even if one of the character was an orphan who lost most of his family. When I finish, I can't come to grips with reality, the real world. In fact, it feels like my entire life is completely handicapped for a week! My mom jokingly says my soul is still lost somewhere in the book even though my body was in reality.

People have given me advice such as "don't take the novel so seriously, know that it is just in your head". However, what is the point of the reading a novel if you're not moved, if you don't imagine that it is real, if you don't bring back anything that you learned from reading it? I want to know, how to be able to get rid of my depression after finishing the novel, without sacrificing the experience. I want to be able to read and get affected, but positively and not negatively.

How can I achieve that?

Sorry for being a bit incoherent, but I still haven't gotten rid of my "zombie mode"

The problem is I get so moved by the novel that it begins to affect my life negatively as well. Like my mom said, my soul is still somewhere in the book, lost, even though my body is in this world. I want to get touched and emotionally affected by a novel, but not in a negative way, so that I can't even live normally. I keep thinking about the novel, and feeling empty, that I am a walking zombie. And that is not what I want. I want to be affected positively.

Basically, all I am saying is that I want the best of both worlds - I want to be moved while I read the novel, and I want it to affect my life positively, but I don't want the overwhelming emotions to slosh over too much into my everyday life, certainly not so much that I become a walking, empty corpse. I want to be immersed in it while I read - while keeping my composition when I'm not. Thanks for replying BTW.

Hmmm... so basically, the advice is to either consider this kind of post-novel reading empty feeling as positive rather than negative, and that rereading the novel might help with my problem.

Thanks!

Thanks everyone for the replies. I think that just talking about my problem, and knowing that I'm not alone to feel "homesick" about the imaginary world of the novels, that the feeling is shared by everyone else, is already doing me a lot of help. Thanks!

Karen Duvall said:

Argh! I envy you SOOO much! I miss that "lost" feeling, that total immersion I used to feel during and after a novel. It's been years since I felt that way about a book. I want to be a post-novel zombie. That's the joy of reading.

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Perhaps you haven't read a good enough novel?

Just in case you wanna know, the novel that turned me into a post-novel zombie is called "Lily's Crossing", by Patricia Reilly Giff. Very touching novel. I think it won the Newberry Honor and Boston Globe.