# Books that have made you bawl **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 24, 2004, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829 "2004-02-24T04:11:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/61 "2004-02-25T02:03:11Z")
“Charlotte’s Web” and “Where the Red Fern Grows” (I’m an adult, I still can’t re-read that book…I’m such a wimp) obviously. Guy Gavriel Kay (I didn’t know he was writing something new) tears me up. But, and I’m ashamed to admit it, the last book that had me crying was “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.” I broke up completely at the stone table. I’m sure there are more, they’re just not coming to mind right now. ---
**Author:** ![Ponder\_Stibbons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponder_stibbons/32/343_2.png) [@Ponder\_Stibbons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponder_Stibbons)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/62 "2004-02-25T02:07:07Z")
_The Diary of Anne Frank_. Read it when I was about 12. It left a very powerful impression on me. _Flowers for Algernon_. Read this one maybe at age 16. Another one that has left a very strong impression. The question of what just makes you _you_ still gets me thinking at night. Any number of books I’ve read in the intervening years have made me think, but only those two have ever made me cry. Now, if you want to talk movies, that’s a whole other subject! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Iacob\_Matthew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Iacob\_Matthew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iacob_Matthew)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/63 "2004-02-25T02:08:10Z")
I think the only book that’s actually produced water from my eyes, ever, is _Watership Downs_, largely because I read it in two sittings because it was assigned for a class and I thought it was going to be as silly as the premise until I actually got around to reading it. I was vaguely attached to the characters after I took a nap after the first 300 or so pages and thought on it for a while, and then I almost felt as though I’d known them for years, being literally incapable of putting it down for up until the last three pages, where my eyes watered hard enough that I couldn’t make out the words. I knew it was exactly the perfect ending for the book and it’s what the main character would be happoest with, but I felt a part of me trying to kill itself as I read that. On the list of “I just thought like I should feel something” afterwards, there’s… _The Remains of the Day_ by K. Ishiguro The adopted daughter chapter from RAH’s _Time Enough for Love_ and (to a lesser extent) his _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_. Dementia, vegetative states, and otherwise being crippled have always made more of an effect on me than death, oddly enough. Ursula K. LeGuin’s _The Left Hand of Darkness_ had one of those few characters I actually related to (it’s impossible not to after all those ice chapters). The Suicide struck right to my heart. The transition between the second and third books in Walter M. Miller’s _A Canticle for Leibowitz_ made me feel pride in humanity, but the third book’s later reference to The Poet made me go through the anger stage of coping with sadness (which feels distinctly different from any other type of anger). Mysteriously, my sixth-grade US history book killed me at what they presented as positive in their modern section. This was a rather poor district with books from the 50’s, you see… Of course, anyone who’s not affected by reading the short _Flowers for Algernon_ shouldn’t bother to pretend that they’re a human being. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/64 "2004-02-25T02:24:12Z")
I cried at the end of **I Know This Much Is True** by Wally Lamb. I didn’t have tears in my eyes; I was _bawling_. The twinship stuff and the schizo brother hit close to home. I know this doesn’t count, but in my ninth grade English class we watched _A Raisin in the Sun_, the one with Ruby Dee and Sidney Poitier. I started howling when Willy ripped off Walter Lee. The teacher actually yelled at me to shut up. That scene–the one where he falls to his knees and yells “WILLY!”–still gets to me. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Purl_McKnittington)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/65 "2004-02-25T03:45:11Z")
I can’t believe I’d blocked out my reaction to Harry Potters 3 and 5. OotP for the reasons spoiler boxed by **Draelin** and the third one (title of which I am too lazy to look up) when Harry is so close to getting to live in a happy home with Sirius, but it’s snatched away when Sirius has to go into hiding. Of course, the reasons for Harry having to live with the wretched Dursleys are made clear in book 5, but it was just _too_ horrible in book 3. I’m convinced, however, that Sirius will be making a return somehow. Remember, he only fell through the curtain; he wasn’t beheaded or anything. His character was just too jaggedy – it felt incomplete. He _has_ to come back. Or JKR is a worse author than that guy who wrote The Eye of Argon. I think I just hijacked my own thread. ---
**Author:** ![interface2x](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c0e974/32.png) [@interface2x](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/interface2x)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/66 "2004-02-25T04:01:28Z")
The end of Douglas Coupland’s _Life After God_ hit me pretty hard. ---
**Author:** ![LurkMeister](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3da27b/32.png) [@LurkMeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LurkMeister)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/67 "2004-02-25T04:32:44Z")
Heinlein’s _Podkayne of Mars_. I have no idea why, but something about the ending just got to me the first time I read it, and every time since. It’s been years since I’ve read it; I’ll have to dig out my copy and see if it still affects me the same way. I also remember once getting misty-eyed after reading his short story _The Menace from Earth_. Those are two that come to mind. I’m sure there are more. ---
**Author:** ![Selkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbce88/32.png) [@Selkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Selkie)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/68 "2004-02-25T04:41:40Z")
> [@ivylass](#): > > Oh, James Herriot! I forgot one…he’s trying frantically to save a dog from mange, trying all sorts of treatments over weeks, and then he comes home and sees the dog in the headlights of his car. It hits him that there’s nothing more they can do for this beautiful dog, so he has to put her down. > > Then, it turns out, if the dog had only been born a few years later, they could have treated her successfully. Oh WHY did you have to remind me about that one. The dog’s name was Amber, and he raves about what a beautiful dog she had been, and Herriot goes on and on about the poor nun who had been treating her all that time … \ I never could finish **The Plague Dogs**. Another weepy for me (at least when I was a kid, and I refuse to re-read it as an adult lest it provoke the same reaction): **Tuck Everlasting** ---
**Author:** ![Merla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Merla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merla)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/69 "2004-02-25T04:54:16Z")
I forgot… there was this incredibly powerful short story I read when I was probably 13 that made me cry. I can’t remember where I read it or what it is called… it might have been called simply “Rose”. It was about this girl that woke up with no memory and nothing but a rose tattoo on her behind and the nurses called her Rose. So she went to a tattoo parlor to see if they could tell her about herself. The man working there ends up tattooing her entire body, and everything he draws makes her remember something about her incredibly sad life. In the end she pulls off her skin of all the tattoos she had done and leaves them behind as if leaving her old life there, and walks out with just her rose tattoo. This was such a moving story I cried terribly hard, even though I usually didn’t at 13. Does anyone know this story? Merla ---
**Author:** ![Journeyman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/779978/32.png) [@Journeyman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Journeyman)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/70 "2004-02-25T05:09:56Z")
I’ll second _Night_. It’s very powerfully written, but it’s the unflinching nature of the story that left me in ashes. This didn’t make me cry, but I do think it’s sad: a Bradbury story, I think it’s called _And there will come silent rains_. Or maybe that line is just mentioned in the story somewhere. The one about the automated house diligently caring for a family that was vaporized by a nuclear weapon years ago. ---
**Author:** ![supernerd23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ba9def/32.png) [@supernerd23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/supernerd23)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/71 "2004-02-25T05:49:37Z")
The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner ---
**Author:** ![MadnessIsAVirtue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@MadnessIsAVirtue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MadnessIsAVirtue)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/72 "2004-02-25T06:02:18Z")
I don’t tend to cry much, but of those I can think of right now, I was choked up by _Garp_, the ending of \*The Sirens of Titan \* and some parts of _Timequake_. ---
**Author:** ![racinchikki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eada6e/32.png) [@racinchikki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racinchikki)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/73 "2004-02-25T06:44:49Z")
> [@Journeyman](#): > > This didn’t make me cry, but I do think it’s sad: a Bradbury story, I think it’s called _And there will come silent rains_. Or maybe that line is just mentioned in the story somewhere. > > The one about the automated house diligently caring for a family that was vaporized by a nuclear weapon years ago. The title is _There Will Come Soft Rains_. The story can be read [here](http://www.dchsenglish.com/dchsenglish/assignments/therewillcomesoftrains.htm). The title comes from [this poem](http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/t/teasdale/sr.html). ---
**Author:** ![Katisha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bcef8e/32.png) [@Katisha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katisha)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/74 "2004-02-25T07:33:49Z")
Oh, gosh, I’m a terrible sap when it comes to books. LotR, definitely – it hasn’t gotten mentioned much in this thread. The ending of _The Once and Future King_ really gets to me, as does _Les Miserables._ I’ve been known to get teary at _Watership Down,_ and as I recall parts of _A Canticle for Leibowitz,_ and I actually cried through the last few chapters of _The Man in the Iron Mask._ If we can include poetry, then Robinson’s [“Ben Jonson Entertains a Man From Stratford”](http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem1728.html) always reduces me to tears – though this is a very personal reaction; it’s not exactly a _sad_ poem per se. Wilfred Owen’s poetry induces the same reaction for a very different reason. And I once got weepy in class, rather embarrassingly, when the prof read Milton’s _Lycidas_ to us… And I know there’s plenty more. As I said, I’m a sap. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/75 "2004-02-25T08:09:04Z")
Just remembered another one: The night I had my dog Axel put to sleep, I got drunk and re-read Harlan Ellisons’ “The Deathbird,” and cried harder than I ever had before in my adult life. But there were some special circumstances going on there. Didn’t make me cry the first time I read it, when my dog was still alive. ---
**Author:** ![3Much](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/4af34b/32.png) [@3Much](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3Much)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/76 "2004-02-25T13:14:06Z")
> [@LurkMeister](#): > > Heinlein’s _Podkayne of Mars_. I have no idea why, but something about the ending just got to me the first time I read it, and every time since. It’s been years since I’ve read it; I’ll have to dig out my copy and see if it still affects me the same way. > > I also remember once getting misty-eyed after reading his short story _The Menace from Earth_. > > Those are two that come to mind. I’m sure there are more. Just to let you know, there is an alternate ending to _Podkayne_. I won’t give it away (not even in a spoiler box), but you can find it in the book _Requiem_, along with some previously unreprinted material. Glad to see there are others out there that feel as I do about Heinlein. Someone else seconded my vote for The Tale of the Adopted Daughter section from _Time Enough For Love_. One more story would be _The Long Watch_. Tears of pride on that one. ---
**Author:** ![Fish\_Cheer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fish_cheer/32/17179_2.png) [@Fish\_Cheer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish_Cheer)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/77 "2004-02-25T13:41:56Z")
Huh? More than fifty replies without anybody mentioning _Love Story_ by Erich Segal? Me, the big sissy or what? ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/78 "2004-02-25T18:09:13Z")
> [@zweisamkeit](#): > > I’m talking heaving sobs, gasping for breath and huge crocodile tears. Night by Elie Wiesel. The whole book was sad, but I just completely lost it at the scene in the train car with the old man and the bread. > > . Amen. This is the most incredibly visual, fast paced, bleak, desolate, grim book I’ve ever encountered. When they leave their concentration camp to march day and night in freezing weather with bare feet and the ragged clothes on their back and endure Jehovah Knows What during this forced march, and when they at last arrive at their new concentration camp, \* and were happy to at last arrive there\* I threw down the book and sobbed my eyes out for a good ten minutes. Another book at the polar opposite is **Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire**. The scene of holding off Voldemort with his wand and out of the want comes all the dead people he knows…and when his parents emerge I just lose it. Some scenes in \*\* Donbas\*\* leave me sniffling like crazy. Not as dark, but totally mesmerizing. If you like Night for all the grimness and startling power of the human spirit, I highly recommend **Donbas**. by Jacque Sandelescu. (sp?) ---
**Author:** ![LurkMeister](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3da27b/32.png) [@LurkMeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LurkMeister)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/79 "2004-02-25T18:27:55Z")
> [@3Much](#): > > Just to let you know, there is an alternate ending to _Podkayne_. I won’t give it away (not even in a spoiler box), but you can find it in the book _Requiem_, along with some previously unreprinted material. > > Glad to see there are others out there that feel as I do about Heinlein. Someone else seconded my vote for The Tale of the Adopted Daughter section from _Time Enough For Love_. One more story would be _The Long Watch_. Tears of pride on that one. I had forgotten about that. I have a copy of _Requiem_ somewhere, and now I remember reading the alternate ending, but I can’t remember it. (They say the first sign of old age is losing your memory; I can’t remember the second. 🙂 ) ---
**Author:** ![statheist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9adbd/32.png) [@statheist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/statheist)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/80 "2004-02-25T18:32:30Z")
_The Brothers K_ by David James Duncan - bawled like a baby, then laughed out loud within several pages. INCREDIBLE book!! _Angela’s Ashes_ by Frank McCourt [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829.md?page=5)