I cry at the drop of a hat. It’s not even sporting to try to make me cry with a book or movie. Like shooting fish in a barrel, or birds on a baited field. 
Oh my, I hadn’t even thought about “weeping” in the sense of horror at the real world (only in the tragic, dramatic sense).
In that case I also include works such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus, and reading a “comic book” as a child at the house of some friends of my parents, San Mao the orphaned boy, which depicted some truly bleak scenes of wartime and colonial indignities in 1940s China. (Which was my first reading of a “comic” that was not humorous in nature… Kind of a shock, but very eye-opening.)
I must admit that if I were in western Kansas, I’d cry too.
I admit it: this mama can’t make it through Love You Forever without tearing up, either – although the illustrations are really pretty bad.
I’m on a nonstop Dickens kick right now. Just finished* Little Dorrit *and Our Mutual Friend–what a dark masterpiece that was!–just started Bleak House. Domby and Sons is next.
The more I read the more amazed at what an all-around brilliant writer he was.
I was mostly unmoved by Deathly Hallows. When I got to Dobby’s funeral, such as it was – sorry, I did not find Luna’s eulogy as eloquent as Harry did I did not cry, but I did wonder what I would have said under such circumstances. Didn’t take more than a few seconds before I remembered:
And then the waterworks started.
That’s a pretty understandable moment to weep your eyes out. But one thing you don’t mention is the identity of the person reading on the audiobook. The performance must’ve been effective – I wonder if a lousy reader would have left you dry-eyed. Who was it, do you remember?
(I can imagine Alan Rickman or Hugh Laurie kicking ass in a reading of this particular book. Both can show dry wit, repressed emotions, or raw vulnerability depending on the circumstances.)
I admit the ending of the movie, “The Joy Luck Club” made me cry. 
I seem to have an involuntary campaign to scar my son emotionally: he cried at Thorin’s death, and again at Charlotte’s. I have to admit, I had a catch in my throat when I read that paragraph aloud:
“She never moved again. Next day, as the Ferris wheel was being taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died. The Fair Grounds were soon deserted. The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn. The infield was littered with bottles and trash. Nobody, of all the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died.”
That is some damn fine writing.
I’m so glad to read this. I used to read it to the kids and at some point in just the last few years I was visiting someone with a small child. Instant wet eyes.
The book that makes me cry every single time? Passages in “My Name Is Asher Lev”, by Chaim Potok. It resonates to the point of tears.
Cartooniverse
I’ve already taken in back to the library, so I can’t be sure. I think it might be Ian Richardson.
But really, with this story, anyone could do it and make you cry. If they had Gilbert Godfrey alternating chapters with Fran Dreischer, I bet I still woulda gotten weepy at the end.