Count me in on that, too. At least once a book since Goblet of Fire. I lost count during the last one, but none of them gave me the racking sobs like the ends of Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince.
I puddled up at the end of Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, particularly in the scene with the young couple and their infant child. If you’ve read the book, you know why.
I got a little misty while reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, about Lincoln’s Cabinet, as the President and First Lady take a carriage ride - true story! - in the afternoon before going to Ford’s Theatre, and talk about how relieved they are that the Civil War is over, and happily talk about their plans for the future. But it was not to be…
Where the Red Fern Grows
The Dark Tower VII. When Oy dies and when Jake dies (for the last time)
Time Traveller’s Wife, of course, for the reasons mentioned above.
It, when the dog is being tortured. Only Stephen King book I’ve ever not finished because I was so upset by the descriptions.
The Color Purple, and the movie.
The note at the end of the Dark Tower V, I think, where Stephen King talks about Frank Muller being in a motorcycle accident. I bawled like a baby. I felt like those characters, whom I adored, had all just been taken from me. Frank Muller WAS those characters to me.
Under the Skin, by Michel Faber.
Many many many books - but a few I can think of off the top of my head (mainly because I remember reading them on planes and being embarassed I was sobbing with people around):
Also - Where the Red Fern Grows, A Prayer for Owen Meany, Joy Luck Club, The Color Purple, Watership Down, Year of Magical Thinking, Time Traveller’s Wife.
I did cry. Damn you Audrey Niffenegger - you knew what you were trying to achieve and by fuck you succeeded. Many, many congratulations.
Oh my goodness, Glory just reminded me that I finished Watership Down during “reading time” at school. It was one of the most humiliating moments of my boyhood, bawling without control, in front of all of my classmates, aged ten.
Wally Lamb’s I Know This Much to be True. The ending, where the old woman does the magic with the rabbits, gets me every time.
The Subtle Knife where Lee dies holding off the bad guys with his daemon Hestor spotting for him. The line that describes Hester putting her little head on his chest and dying nearly killed me
Birdsong, the Battle of the Somme, 'nuff said.
I really teared up when Orlando’s parents got to visit him in the Middle Earth sim.
One of my first posts here was about reading Watership Down for the first time. I wish I had read it when I was younger.
That and when Elizabeth visits the memorial at Thiepval. Not the names of the dead, but the names of the missing - 58,000 strong. She has to sit down quickly in the novel, overwhelmed, as did I in real life.
The first and last time I’ve ever cried was while reading The Bridge to Terabithia when I was 10 or 11.
The end of Charlotte’s Web always gets me.
Where the Red Fern Grows
Little Ann and Old Dan. I’ll miss you, even though you weren’t my dogs.
Toby Tyler
Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon. When Jamie makes Claire go back to her time. Claire said she heard her heart break…it was like the snap of a flower stem.
I had to put the book down and bawl into a pillow. But then, in Voyager, when Claire tracks Jamie down through history and shows up at his printing shop! I was crying from joy.
And I know it’s sneered at around here, but the* Dragonlance* series. I forget if it’s Dragons of Winter Twilight or Dragons of Spring Dawning, but when Flint dies, and Tas is sitting off by himself, tears streaming down his face.
I’ve snivelled over quite a few of the previously mentioned–I’m such a sucker.
Orson Scott Card has zapped me quite a few times, most notable in Hart’s Hope & Lost Boys. I’ve strictly forbidden my daughter to read the latter until Grandboy is safely into high school.
I bawled like a baby at the end of Marley and Me but then again any halfway well described death of a beloved pet will get me going.
I came here to post about The Time Traveler’s Wife, and I am not at all surprised to see how many people have beaten me to it. That book was perfect from beginning to end, but reading the last 100 pages was like sloooooowly pulling a Band-Aid off of my heart. You know how it will end but are powerless to stop it. And then that epilogue. That book is amazingly painful to read. Even my husband cried over it.