# So What Stories Or Books Make You Cry? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 13, 2003, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353 "2003-09-13T05:08:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![AbbySthrnAccent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb9ed0/32.png) [@AbbySthrnAccent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AbbySthrnAccent)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2003, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/41 "2003-09-15T15:30:06Z")
Second many of the above and add, The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2003, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/42 "2003-09-15T18:44:06Z")
“The Milagro Beanfield War”. I laughed so hard, tears were streaming down my face. Same for the second reading. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Ashtar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ea924/32.png) [@Lord\_Ashtar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Ashtar)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2003, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/43 "2003-09-15T20:34:42Z")
_My Brother Sam is Dead_ by Patty M. Blome. Read it for the first time in 4th grade. The only book I have ever read that made me shed a tear. ---
**Author:** ![Isabelle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b5a626/32.png) [@Isabelle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isabelle)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2003, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/44 "2003-09-15T20:43:49Z")
Where the Red Fern Grows The Color Purple Rocky 2 Old Yeller The Wizard of Oz ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2003, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/45 "2003-09-15T21:36:03Z")
_Dragonfly in Amber_, when Jamie is sending Claire back through the stones. I love that series, and I’ve read it several times. The first time, though, I actually put the book down and screamed into my pillow. “I felt my heart breaking. It made a small sound, like the snap of a flower stem.” Then I read _Voyager_, and I cried again, for an entirely better and happy reason. I love Diana Gabaldon. What a fabulous writer she is. ---
**Author:** ![manx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/65b543/32.png) [@manx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manx)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2003, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/46 "2003-09-15T22:05:46Z")
The last two pages of RotK, at the Grey Havens. Doesn’t mater how many times I read the books, every time I get to the end I cry. Hell, I tried explaining why it made me cry and I got all sniffy. My friends thnk I’m a sad geek now. And the last chapter of Winnie the Pooh, because I remember my dad reading it to me and explaining that CR was growing up and going to school, which is why there’s no more Pooh stories. Sniffle. One of John Steinbeck’s books that I read ages ago made me howl. Cannery Row/Lane, maybe. Meh, now I’m all depressed. ---
**Author:** ![Shemem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de053/32.png) [@Shemem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shemem)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2003, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/47 "2003-09-15T22:23:36Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by sleeping \* > \*\*_A Wind in the Door_, by Madeleine L’Engle. \*\* Oh, Progo … Cyrano de Bergerac. I know it’s a play, but I’ve read it many more times than I’ve seen it. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2003, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/48 "2003-09-15T22:45:42Z")
The biggies: _Charlotte’s Web_ _The Last Battle_ _Bridge to Terabithia_ Spoiler for Bridge to Terabithia: My fifth grade teacher read “Bridge” to the class, but I missed the last day. I came back and asked my best friend Matt what had happened. He told me that she died, and I couldn’t believe it. I said, “No she didn’t.” And he just kept telling me she had died. I refused to believe it. I was still refusing years later when I read the book. I kept telling myself that he was just making fun of me. _Enemy Mine_ One of the books by Martha Grimes, I think it’s _Help the Poor Struggler._ It makes my heart hurt. And the one that I can’t even read an excerpt from without bawling, James Joyce’s “The Dead.” > [@](#): > > A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. _sob_ Julie ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2003, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/49 "2003-09-15T22:47:51Z")
Is anyone else unable to reread books that make you cry? I can’t touch _Bridge to Terabithia_, for example. I just can’t. I try to avoid reading sad books entirely because they are capable of putting me into a depression for days. Am I alone in this? Julie ---
**Author:** ![Primaflora](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/898d66/32.png) [@Primaflora](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Primaflora)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2003, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/50 "2003-09-16T01:36:54Z")
Dorothy Dunnett’s _Pawn in Frankincense_. The chess game gets me every time ☹ ---
**Author:** ![picunurse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2003, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/51 "2003-09-16T06:43:28Z")
I just finished _The Lovely Bones_Cried all the way through it. Also In the children’s books \* The Velveteen Rabbit, The Caretakers of Wonder\* ---
**Author:** ![Katisha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bcef8e/32.png) [@Katisha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katisha)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2003, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/52 "2003-09-16T06:50:44Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by TubaDiva \* > **But, to tide you over . . .[The Piper At the Gates of Dawn](http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=GraWind.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=7&division=div1)** \*_sniffle_ _sniffle_\* [This poem](http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem1728.html) always makes me cry, and I’m not even sure why… ---
**Author:** ![Jerrybear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8c91f0/32.png) [@Jerrybear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jerrybear)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2003, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/53 "2003-09-16T17:58:12Z")
“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.” And now my eyes are full of tears. This is the last paragraph (actually a long run on sentence) from “On The Road” by Jack Kerouac. One of my all time favorite books, and most of it really happened. The narrator (Sal Paradise) is based on Kerouac himself, and the Dean Moriarty character on his close friend Neal Cassady. The poet Allen Ginsberg also appears as “Carlo Marx,” as do several other Beat Generation writers under assumed names. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2003, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/54 "2003-09-16T21:22:07Z")
Many short stories by O. Henry. Two especially good ones: _A Retrieved Reformation_, featuring the gone-straight safe-cracker Jimmy Valentine: [http://members.tripod.com/~drugnicity/henry.html](http://members.tripod.com/~drugnicity/henry.html) And _An Unfinished Story_, a heart-rending account of the grinding poverty endured by a turn-of-the-century New York shopgirl: [http://www.classicreader.com/read.php/sid.6/bookid.1749/](http://www.classicreader.com/read.php/sid.6/bookid.1749/) ---
**Author:** ![ddgryphon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8c91f0/32.png) [@ddgryphon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ddgryphon)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2003, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/55 "2003-09-16T22:10:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by headshok \* > \*\*I cried at the end of _Watership Down_. Stupid rabbits. ☹ > > I also got a bit weepy at the end of Stephen King’s _Bag of Bones_. The little girl in the story reminded me of my niece for some reason, so the ending hit me pretty hard. \*\* Yep! Me too – stupid, stupid rabbits ---
**Author:** ![Kobaltblu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/77aa72/32.png) [@Kobaltblu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobaltblu)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2003, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/56 "2003-09-17T21:12:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ddgryphon \* > \*\*Yep! Me too – stupid, stupid rabbits \*\* To this day, when I have to do something important, but I’m afraid that I might not be brave or assertive enough, I’ll think to myself, _don’t go tharn!_ I read that book when I was in the sixth grade, and it affects me still. Stupid, stupid, stupid rabbits. ---
**Author:** ![kalex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dfb087/32.png) [@kalex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kalex)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2003, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/57 "2003-09-18T02:04:05Z")
Bizarrely, both books have to do with dogs, and I am not a dog person, as my two cats can tell you. BUT… Spoilers a-comin’- House of Leaves, when the skanky ho Johnny has hooked up with throws the Peke pup out the window…well, it’s just too much. But even worse, Riddley Walker, when Riddley’s traveling companion, the black dog, noses his hand for the first time, I cry like a baby every single time. I’m a geek gal, and no mistake. ---
**Author:** ![nisosbar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c37758/32.png) [@nisosbar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nisosbar)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2003, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/58 "2003-09-18T03:20:24Z")
The first of Naguib Mahfouz’ Cairo Trilogy - “Palace Walk,” partially due to Mr. Mahfouz’ outstanding ability to give real depth to his characters, and of course, the ending. ---
**Author:** ![the\_Scarlet\_Pimpernel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f1d935/32.png) [@the\_Scarlet\_Pimpernel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_Scarlet_Pimpernel)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2003, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/59 "2003-09-18T11:24:50Z")
Another vote for _The Little Match Girl_. Heres how pathetic I am - in Tivoli, the amusement park in Copenhagen (HCA was Danish), they have a ride where you go past audioanimatronic scenes from Andersen’s stories. I choked up every time I rode past the Little Match Girl scene. I also cried during _The Poisonwood Bible_, by Barbara Kingsolver, IIRC. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2003, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353/60 "2003-09-18T11:52:56Z")
I can never finish Heinlein’s _The Man Who Traveled in Elephants_ without tearing up. Spider Robinson says the same thing, and claims that Heinlein told him that was his specific intent in writing the story. **TubaDiva** , I also tear up at the chapter in _Wind in the Willows_ where Rat and Mole return to Mole End at Christmastime… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-stories-or-books-make-you-cry/201353.md?page=2)