I’m easy. I had a strong emotional response to the Animorphs series, fer crying out loud. Primarily, though, I’d always viewed reading as being a form of light entertainment. I did it constantly, and with almost everything, though I was always a bit detached about it. I really enjoyed Louise Lawrence’s books, but. . .they were sci-fi, so I was still detached. Then I read Elie Wiesel’s Dawn during the summer between 9th and 10th grade. That got me, and it exhausted me, which, given its short length, is nothing short of amazing.
Whether it was the very first, the one I can think of that drained me was The Exorcist which scared the shit out of me.
And though not a novel, I had even more of an emotional draining from Helter Skelter.
The Cat in the Hat
I was so anxious that those kids were going to get a whipping when their mom got home that my hands were shaking. The feeling of relief when the Cat cleaned up on the way out just sapped all the rest of my emotional energy.
The first one? Charlotte’s Web!
A Child Called It.
I was in tears. On an airplane.
The Grapes Of Wrath. I read it when I was sixteen and when I finished it I wanted to run out and join the Communist Party. (I didn’t.)
Possibly The Robe (even though it didn’t turn me into a Christian). I also remember falling in love with Austin family when I was mid-teen.
The most recent example is Walter Mosley’s last Easy Rawlins book. Mosley’s going to be in town soon for the Festival of Books.
I’m thinking of going, just to see if I can get close enough to puch him in the nose.
Probably I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings which I read when I was in 9th grade (ca. 1980-81). I went to a small town publich high school but surprisingly there was no outcry when our English teacher put it on the list of books for a report (it’s been challenged a lot in its history). Coming from YA books in English class it was really odd to read something that contained not just sex but child rape. Anyway, even though I was a white boy and the heroine was a black girl I “knew” a lot of the characters and the terrain (different region but similar landscape) and I remember really getting emotionally invested in it.
The World According to Garp was the first book I ever read as an adult that made me weep openly. Nowadays, I’m a big sappy mess on a regular basis, but back when I was a jaded, cynical twenty-four year old ( :rolleyes: ) that was a huge and weird deal for me.
I can’t remember which I read first, Stranger in a Strange Land, or The Handmaid’s Tale, but both of them left me feeling completely wrung-out and as if my brain had been inhabiting someone else’s body for a time.
Probably the first novel that left me drained was one of John Steinbeck’s, back when I was in high school. For some reason, English teachers thought that John Steinbeck was an appropriate author to require moody adolescents to read. They didn’t leave me feeling happy, though.
The first novel that I can specifically remember is, I believe, Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones, although again I didn’t feel happy about the ending, just a bit hopeful.
Me too.
I remember when I got to the part about Walt dying I literally had to put the book down and walk away from it for a while. And by “a while” I mean days. I remember being so bewildered that I was having to process emotions like that because of something I’d read in a freaking made-up story.
The power of prose, I guess.
Possibly this, but my first thought was Where the Red Fern Grows, which I read all in one Saturday when I was about 7.
1984. It was required reading for a philosophy class in my freshman year of college – which was 1984 (well, OK, the class was in January 1985, but why split hairs?)
The class was during the 3-week interim session after Christmas break, when hardly anyone is on campus. I read that book over the course of a day or two in a mostly empty dorm. Blew my little mind.
Between that and Plato’s Republic, the other required reading for the class, I barely had any neurons left come February. So much for my brain to chew on . . .
- A Dog Called Kitty*
I can’t remember how old I was, but it was the first story I had ever read that did not end “happily ever after”.
The Yearling Cried for hours after finishing this book at age 10.
That’s what I came here to say. I was in college at the time, and this book was required reading for a Science Fiction elective class I was taking my freshman year. Even though I didn’t need to read the book for a few weeks, I decided to open it up and read the beginning, and I ended up becoming so engrossed in the story I couldn’t put it down until I finished it the next day.
I might add that I’m not much of a reader, and if I do read a book, it’s usually for a couple pages at a time before my mind wanders. Ender’s Game was actually the first time I read an entire novel on my own without being required to do so (at least not at that particular time).
One of the first really positive emotional reads I remember was Watership Down - must have been around 7 or 8? I remember getting totally wrapped up in those bunnies, and the bit at the end was just perfect.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, actually:
I guess I should spoiler box a Harry Potter spoiler:
And Harry saw very clearly as he sat there under the hot sun how people who cared about him had stood in front of him one by one, his mother, his father, his godfather, and finally Dumbledore, all determined to protect him; but now that was over. He could not let anybody else stand between him and Voldemort; he must abandon forever the illusion he ought to have lost at the age of one, that the shelter of a parent’s arms meant that nothing could hurt him. There was no waking from this nightmare, no comforting whisper in the dark that he was safe really, that it was all in his imagination; the last and greatest of his protectors had died, and he was more alone than he had ever been.
Really got to me.
Any book about animals affects me, really, but back when I was a horse-loving young girl, I read “Black Beauty” and cried and cried and cried. I can’t bear reading anything involving cruelty to animals. I can’t bear it…“The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter” by Sharyn McCrumb had a scene in it that, when I was a new mother, so devastated me I cried hysterically non-stop for 10 minutes…On the ‘up’ side, “Gone With The Wind” was like finishing up a huge meal at an all-you-can-eat buffet, and over the years I’ve gone back many times for a little bit of this, a bit more of that…