I must give The Time Traveller’s Wife a read. I have a copy of it somewhere.
The very end of Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen still makes me tear up, even though I must have read it a dozen times.
I don’t know why I read the spoilers in this thread for all the books I’ve read, because I’m nearly crying now. Damn you, Niffenegger! You were the worst. Although none of them were exactly a happy-good time.
From the Harry Potter series, when [spoiler]-- Cedric Diggory dies. First in a long series of tearjerkers.
– when Sirius gets pushed through the portal by his cousin in The Order of the Phoenix, I was reduced to sobbing as I had not in a long time. And then Harry throws the mirror Sirius gave him, and it shatters, and that last connection he might have had was lost.
– when Dumbledore dies in The Half-Blood Prince. In some ways, I think the books are about the death of innocence. Dumbledore dying and then being revealed as painfully human in the next book plays a large part in that.
– when Ron leaves Hermione and Harry in The Deathly Hollows. Also when Percy comes back, and then Fred dies and Percy is absolutely frozen with shock and grief. And then Harry decides to make his sacrifice. And “The Prince’s Tale.” Basically the last four or five chapters of the book was one big sob fest.[/spoiler]
My copy of Little Women is liberally spotted with tears where Beth dies and when Professor Bhaer finally proposes at the end.
Anne of Green Gables when Matthew dies.
The Island of the Blue Dolphins, when I realized that Karana was never going to see her family again, or anybody else for that matter. She was entirely without a people, because her people had disappeared. Pretty damned devastating, even for a sixth grader. Damn you, Scott O’Dell! You’re so good at that.
The Diana Gabaldon Outlander series, though I’m having trouble thinking of any moments other than the ones ivylass mentioned.
So many more: The World According to Garp, She’s Come Undone, The Mists of Avalon, a few times in the Dies the Fire series by S.M. Stirling, The Mayor Casterbridge, The Hours, several times in the Narnia books. I keep starting Ethan Frome and then setting it aside, because I know what’s coming. Same for . . . agh, what’s it called? The little boy commits suicide because his family is poor? It was a movie with Kate Winslet.
I think I’m going to have to join jjimm in being a blubbery wuss, though I have the advantage of actually wearing girl’s blouses. In fact a shorter list may have been the good books that didn’t make me bawl.
Man, that one got me too.
Praise the Human Season by Don Robertson
Ohmigod somebody else reads Robertson! 
The Lovely Bones. Just the part where…
…her dog, Holiday, shows up there with her.
I read the proposal passage at my sister’s wedding and had a very hard time getting through it without dissolving in tears.
Mr God, this is Anna.
either the part where Anna
is pulled off the railings and lies dying, telling Fynn that “I bet Mr God lets me into heaven for this”.
or the bit a little later on where Fynn, having been through the war, returns to find Anna’s grave covered with wildflowers
Although I was disappointed by the Dark Tower series finale, the end was probably the only book that made me weep. This line in particular:
“I come in the name of Jake Chambers, he of New York, whom I call my own true son”.
Yah, I’m like every other Dark Tower reader who bitches about the last three books and the ending, but I cried throughout the end. It is totally enveloping.
There have been several, but a couple that haven’t been mentioned yet are:
Geek Love. I don’t remember any particular part, the whole book just really got to me.
High Fidelity, if you can believe it.
And count me as another one sobbing through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (particularly The Forest Again chapter) and The Bridge to Terabithia (book *and *film, natch).
You got me again, just reading that spoiler (I just finished the series). All the parts with daemons separating from their humans really affected me, for some reason.
I mostly read “Catch 22” for the humour and the satire, but the scene where Kid Sampson is cut in half and the pilot who did it accidentally flies straight into a mountain always gets me.
Oh. And I need to add: Flowers for Algernon
I didn’t care a whit about Beth when I read Little Women, so her death did nothing for me. But when Jo rejects Laurie? And he storms off, and she calls after him, “Where are you going?” and he answers, “To the devil!” Cried like a baby.
I couldn’t possibly list or even remember every book that’s made me cry, but the first one that comes to mind is Milan Kundera’s Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Tamina, a young widow, has not slept with another man since her husband died, not (as the narrator points out) out of misguided duty to her husband’s spirit, but because she knows that she will not be able to stop herself from picturing her husband’s face while she’s with someone else, and she knows she wouldn’t be able to bear that. Before her husband died, the two of them fled communist Czechoslovakia and she now lives in France, but her journals of her life together with her husband are back in her desk in Czechoslovakia. She desperately wants to read the journals, as she’s forgetting more and more of her time with her husband, and she goes to great lengths to have her family send them to her, but no one can come through for her. [spoiler]The unpleasant man who has been trying to seduce Tamina tells her that he’s going to Czechoslovakia in the future, and even though she’s not at all attracted to or interested in him, she finally agrees to sleep with him in the hopes that he will get her journals for her.
When she sleeps with him, Kundera describes the act in such a way that you feel her degradation and self-abasement…and sure enough, she sees her husband’s face before her, watching her as she suffers. That just tears my heart out. [/spoiler]
Others:
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
When She Was Good by Norma Fox Mazer (Philip Roth’s book of the same name would probably make me cry, from what I’ve heard about it)
Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (a play, not a book, but I’ll count it anyway because the ending makes me bawl every time I read it)
At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O’Neill
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Game by A.S. Byatt
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood (particularly the scenes involving Toni’s childhood)
Many, many others.
The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Nightime by Mark Haddon for two reasons. I cried through most of the second half for the story of a boy with high functioning autism and his misunderstanding of the events he was describing - the sheer brilliance of the way the character was written ensured maximum empathy. I also cried because I am an author and I know I could never write like that.
Plus many of those listed above.
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. I was able to finish up to the end of the first half, and the sheer emotional desolation of it sent me not only into a crying jag but also a little emotional tailspin around my own issues. I’m afraid to try to finish it.
Or wait for the movie. Its release date is June 6, 2008.
The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, by Farley Mowat. Both for the ending with Mutt, but the story of the two owls.
There are others I’m sure, but I can’t think of them, now.
Nooo! Another great work of art is going to be messed with. :mad:
I haven’t read that yet, but post-apocalyptic fiction often makes me cry (it’s not usually a very light-hearted subject, true). There are a lot of moments in The Stand that get to me (the big finish towards the end is not one of them, however. At least it wasn’t a giant spider!)