Oh wow, tons of books have made me cry! Two of them stick out in my mind because I read them on planes and it was so hard to hide my boo booing on a crowded flight.
The first one was Heidi. I was 10. When I was 25 it was Les Miserables. A few weeks ago it was A Prayer for Owen Meany.
If you liked Garp and haven’t read Owen Meany, you have a treat coming.
Of Mice and Men. I read it for the first time as an audio book during a long commute, and when I got to the end, I had to pull over because I was crying so hard I couldn’t see the road.
There’s a point at the climax of Beloved that gets me just about every time, too.
The Adventures of Peter Pan - J M Barrie
The last chapter “When Wendy grows up”…something about it just brought a tear to my eye. The loss of childhood, the loss of that young imaginative innocence, it’s something that bothers me a lot. People shouldn’t have to grow up. Adulthood should be a choice.
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
What can I say? His slow deterioration, his desperate attempts to hang on to the vestiges of his intelligence, that scene in the classroom when he comes back and sits at her desk like the pupil he once was, the pain she must have felt…utterly heartbreaking. I quite literally bawled my eyes out for this one.
The Quiet American - Graham Greene
Fowler’s frustration, his envy of Pyle, his need for Phuong…primal emotions beautifully brought out by Greene. His descriptions are so tender that you don’t read what he is writing; you feel it. I wept for this book.
Well, the first book that ever made ME cry was a comic book. It was an issue of Green Lantern from around '76/'77, and it was a Thanksgiving story. I was about 9, and the story really touched me. It was about the homeless, and I never looked at them the same again. I also got a chance to meet one of the creators of that issue and tell him how much it meant to me and get him to sign it for me. That was nice.
As for novels, I have outright blubbered at some of the stuff Robert Heinlein has written, most notably the Tale of the Adopted Daughter in the novel “Time Enought For Love”. Not only did I cry the first time I read it, but every time since. The most recent time was only about 6 months ago when I, over the course of about a month, read it outloud to my girlfriend a little bit at a time just before we went to sleep. She cried too. If you are not familiar with the story, I implore you to get it and read it as soon as possible. Some people look askance at science fiction, but that particular story can be appreciated by even the most skeptical.
I don’t know if there’s a parent alive who can read Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever aloud to their kid. No matter how many times I try, I wind up whispering the words past the lump in my throat, then giving up entirely and passing the book over to let the boy finish it himself while I try to dry my face off with his sheets. My nose is all red and swollen just from posting this!
Too many to count. I cry very easily when I read. The ones that made me feel as if my heart was actually breaking are My Name Is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok, and Father Elijah, by Michael O’Brien.
I think the first story that made me cry was The Little Mermaid- the Hans Christian Anderson original, not the Disney version.
I have never read the end of Robert Heinlein’s sort story The Man Who Traveled in Elephants without tearing up. I have teared up for many another book, but this one gets me every single time.
It took me a long time (years) to figure out that “traveling in X” is an expression for “a travelling salesman selling X”.
The Lovely Bones
Two of mine have already been mentioned: The High King, and Bridge to Terabithia.
Other sure-fire sobbers include: Charlotte’s Web, Gaudy Night for some odd reason, and LoTR.
Oh, and the part in The Golden Compass where the little boy is looking for his rat daemon after they’ve been separated.
That upset me so much, I’m so glad I didn’t read it as a child. I was already more than slightly unstable, emotionally.
Julie
Ah, yes. My Name is Asher Lev sure did it for me. Of course, there was also *Little Women * (you all know the part), Owen Meany, and Garp. I am sure there are a ton more and I just can’t think of them right now.
Oh, I forgot the biggie, the one that can make me cry just thinking about it: James Joyce’s “The Dead.” sob
Julie
A child called IT and The Lost Boy both by David Pelzer.
I have not read A Man named Dave yet. Both of the other two books made me cry.
Diary of a Cat. We laughed. We bawled our eyes out. We laughed again. That was the most recent one.
Charlotte’s Web also does it for me. I think it’s not necessarily about the book itself, but more of a sad nostalgia. It’s the only book my Grandpa purchased for me.
I don’t cry, but Of Mice and Men choked me up a little.
My wife had a good cry during the last couple chapters of On The Beach by Nevil Shute. I’d recommend that to anybody. We both just read it within the last year even though its like 50 years old or something.
Dragonfly in Amber, when Jamie sends Claire back through the stones.
Voyager, when Claire returns to Jamie twenty years later.
Both by Diana Gabaldon. I’ve read those books several times, and those scenes always tears me up.
“I could hear my heart break. It was like the snap of a flower stem.”
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!
I find so few people who’ve read Father Elijah. O’Brien also gets me in Eclipse of the Sun, particularly when:
Arrow makes it back to Alice’s place and asks for some yogurt and strawberries. That along with the attachment she developed for him just tears me up.
It’s ends so beyond hope badly.
It’s is also in the “books that scared you”-list that comes up here every now and again.
I’m sure there were more but I can’t think of them now.
Where The Red Fern Grows tore me up. I remember sort of collapsing by the bathroom sobbing my guts out and my mother running up to me and I was trying to tell her, in between sobs, about the dogs. Jeebus.
Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections made me cry, out of frustration for the mother and the father’s deterioration. Knowing that Franzen’s father also had Alzheimers made the depiction of their family life even that more poignant.
I always cry while reading The Hotel New Hampshire. “Sorrow floats.”
Another vote for Bridge to Terabithia, that’s the first book I ever remember crying over. And I’ll also chime in on Voyager, but it’s the letter Claire leaves for Bree that always gets me–and I don’t even like Bree that much.
And this sounds strange, I’m sure, but I cried like a baby for the last few chapters of Ender’s Game.
The most recent, though, was the all-out sniffling, sobbing, puffy-eyed-the-next-day bawlfest that was the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
The scene between Harry and Dumbledore gets me going, and then when Harry asks Nick if Sirius might come back as a ghost makes me lose all control. sigh