Books and Stories That Made You Cry -- MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

BAYLOR

There Are Always new Things to Learn.
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Which Books and stories brought tears to your eyes. This thread covers all the genres .
 
I think everyone's go-to book is Old Yeller but I either never read it or just wasn't as affected - perhaps because of knowing what was intended. The one that got me was Where the Red Fern Grows. Right with that, was J.T.. What horrible things these people do to our tiny little childminds. ;)

I'll think some more on it.
 
Quite a number, to be honest. It can sometimes be a poignant passage of sorrow, or joy, or a particularly beautiful passage that has an effect on me the like of some music. Sometimes it's just a tightness of the chest and a moistening of the eye; sometimes a genuine, good cry. The short story, "Flowers for Algernon", tends to do that last. Interestingly, Heinlein's Double Star also has that effect, with those final lines (in context), hitting me very powerfully. That passage I posted a little while ago from Cabell's Gallantry moves me to tears as well, though not to that extent, because, to me, it speaks to the heart of what it means to truly love (and also because of the sadness that the character in question, for all his intelligence and nearly achieving the same thing, cannot puzzle it out).

I find myself with tears at certain passages in Tolkien's works, too. And, of all things, Lovecraft: "The Quest of Iranon", with its sense of loss of innocence and the illusion of beauty. Soooo many others, over the years....

Let's face it, for all my occasional cynicism, I'm about as much a sentimentalist as a person can be.....
 
Paladin of the Lost Hour by Harlan Ellison. Very powerful story and sad story about an old man and his quest to bequeath a very special pocket watch.

The Last Hieroglyph Clark Ashton Smith The inevitability and inescapability of ones fate.

The Last Defender of Camelot by Roger Zelazny A different prospective on Camelot.

Earth Abides by George R Stewart . Post apocalyptic novel , poignant beautiful.
 
Like J-Sun says, Where the Red Fern Grows is a perennial tear-jerker. In fact, a teacher at our school reads it every year to his 5th grade class, and he has to bring someone else in for the ending because it makes him cry too much -- every year. We read it in 4th grade when I was in school, and I even got it autographed when the author came to visit us.

Several of the Vorkosigan books get me every time -- A Civil Campaign, at Miles' letter to Ekaterin, and Memory when he gets his lifetime job, among others.

A few high (or low) points in Honor Harrington's life still make me cry.

A Prayer for Owen Meany has its moments.

Basically, all the really emotional bits of anything. I even cry at some commercials. On the other hand, I hardly ever cry at anything in real life.
 
In my most recent reading there have been two books that I am unashamed at getting all choked up over:

Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
The Speed of Dark - Elizabeth Moon


Both take the reader on emotional roller coasters and both are brilliant books. There are many other books that have their moments but these two were pretty unrelenting :oops: and both left me thinking about the issues raised for quite some time afterwards (in fact they still do).
 
I'll second (or third) "Flowers for Algernon" for genre stuff - I can't remember if I actually got teary-eyed but I certainly felt teary-eyed. :) Oddly, I was also strongly affected by the beautifully titled The Cosmic Rape by Ted Sturgeon - also published in shorter form and sometimes in book form as the only slightly better "To Marry Medusa". Looks and sounds like a real tear-jerker, huh? Some sort of "cosmic yearning" passage or something.

I think that's about it. There've been a couple of movies that affected me - as I think I've mentioned before, a scene in 2010, of all things, has a kind of joyous, rather than sad, misty-eyed effect on me. But it's rare enough that I likely recall 'em all, though it's been a long time since anything's affected me like that.

Unfortunately, none.

No "gosh wow!" or "boo hoo"? At all? Ever? You were a more stoic child than I, Gunga Din.
 
The first time I cried while reading a book was, I think, at the conclusion of The High King, the fifth book of Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain series...that was a real tear-jerker for me. I must have been...12 or so.
Flowers for Algernon, certainly. And of course, there are moments in Tolkien that make me reach for a hanky, too.
 
Hmm, I'm not sure that I'm actually moved to tears, but I certainly have been moved enough to stop reading and take a deep breath and then carry on.

Obviously Flowers for Algernon it is such a powerful ending, so emotional that it is hard not to feel something.

Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay there is a moment in there that is so raw that it really hit home to my heart when I read it, like wise for Michael Scott Rohan's Hammer of the Sun.

There is a moment in Stronghold by Melanie Rawn that came out of nowhere and and floored me, enough that I had to go back and read it again because I could not believe something so enormous had been told so simply

In a totally different manner I'm pretty sure that the first time I read Good Omens by Pratchett and Gaiman I had tears streaming down my face....

And Middlemarch by George Eliot just made me cry. (Especially when I learned I was going to have to read it again.)
 
So many. (Flowers for Algernon didn't do it for me, though...)

Captain Corelli's Mandolin the scene with Carlo and Antonio and the firing squad. Can't get through it at all...

The time Traveler's Wife

Rachel's holiday
by Marian Keyes which I suspect no one here has read/might want to read, bit the last scene chokes me up every single time.

There are others, I'm sure, but they're the ones guaranteed to set me off.

 
In a totally different manner I'm pretty sure that the first time I read Good Omens by Pratchett and Gaiman I had tears streaming down my face....
Ah I hadn't thought about that kind of tears... and that book; it's still probably my favourite comedy book of all time; I must re-read it one of these days as I've probably forgotten most of the punch lines (though not all - the scene with the four horsemen of the apocalypse as Hell's Angels - "What chapter are you from?"..."Revelations!" - just had me in stitches!).
 
:D

I love all of it Vertigo, but... particularly the way cassettes (what?) that are left in cars for too long turn into Queens greatest hits, and there is a particular bit with the angel being caught in a mystical trap that had me in stitches for hours.

I had a first edition, signed by Pratchett. Someone saw me laughing with at work and asked if they could borrow it. I never got it back. That made me cry as well.
 
It would if you knew what it was worth now... I had to sell my signed Pratchetts through some lean times and I regret it still. I made a great profit, but I really, really just wanted the books.
 
Oh, and how could I forget? Pangborn's A Mirror for Observers.....

Another Pangborn got to me, "Angel's Egg." Also Ray Bradbury's "Homecoming," which I'd nominate for best short American fantasy story of the 20th century.


Randy M.
 
City and Way Station both by Clifford Simak.
 
Not particularly crying, but I get stirred with emotion.

All of Charles Dickens novels have done that for me.

There have been others but none recently that I could recall to make note of.

Oh and the first book I ever wrote actually did bring me to tears but not for the reason the OP speaks of.
 
No "gosh wow!" or "boo hoo"? At all? Ever? You were a more stoic child than I, Gunga Din.

Unfortunately not. There was much curiosity, intrigue, pondering, emotional navel-gazing, but not the others. There has been some music that brought tears to my eyes, but never a book.
 
I'll second (or third) "Flowers for Algernon" for genre stuff - I can't remember if I actually got teary-eyed but I certainly felt teary-eyed. :) Oddly, I was also strongly affected by the beautifully titled The Cosmic Rape by Ted Sturgeon - also published in shorter form and sometimes in book form as the only slightly better "To Marry Medusa". Looks and sounds like a real tear-jerker, huh? Some sort of "cosmic yearning" passage or something.

I think that's about it. There've been a couple of movies that affected me - as I think I've mentioned before, a scene in 2010, of all things, has a kind of joyous, rather than sad, misty-eyed effect on me. But it's rare enough that I likely recall 'em all, though it's been a long time since anything's affected me like that.



No "gosh wow!" or "boo hoo"? At all? Ever? You were a more stoic child than I, Gunga Din.

I wish Gunga Din had been a Novel or at least a short story, Instead of a poem.
 

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