Tears for a Book

[DonutBoy12321]

Have you ever been brought to tears, or close at least, by a book. (I'm talking emotional book scenes, not terrible writing that you cry over.) If so, what was it that made you cry?
Make sure you spoiler what made you cry, we don't want to spoil anyone's day.
My experience is when I was reading the book "Speaker for the Dead," in the Ender's Game series. For some background, in the book there is a species of alien call pequeninos, or piggies. They were under study by xenologers. In the book, they cut open two xenologers, who they were friendly with before, and remove their organs, killing them.
In the scene, the Speaker (Known as Andrew Wiggin, or on occasion, as Ender) is talking to the piggies, an alien species they met. The piggies, knowing of Andrew's past, mention his Xenocide of the buggers (a different alien species.) Andrew Wiggin begins crying.
The piggies ask what the water on his face is, and Miro, a xenologer, explains that that's what humans do when they're sad. The piggies are fascinated, until one cries out in grief and exclaims that he saw that water on Pipo and Libo (the xenologers who were killed) when they were being killed. The other piggies begin crying out, and one piggy claims "They were suffering! This was our greatest honor!"
As it turns out, that is the fate the piggies wish for, and it is honorable in their culture. They thought they were honoring Pipo and Libo.

[Glass Mouse]

Haha, oh yeah. I'm kinda easy to make cry because I get so 100% immersed in stories I see or read.

One thing that's gotten me repeatedly (all 3-4 times I've read the book) is:Uncle Tom's death. Waaah.

[Mikhailangelo]

I don't think there's a need for spoilers for this post, since I'm not revealing any plot details, but the ending of the latest Aidrian Mole book brought a tear to my eye.

[ShadowHunter]

The last book I read was The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, and I, a 26 year old guy, wept openly at the end :(

Good book. I had read another book by her, To Say Nothing of the Dog, which was hilarious, so I grabbed this one expecting a similar tone. I was wrong.

Giving the spoiler is a bit of a hassle as I'd have to explain the background for it to make sense.

[Elm11]

I can't say I've ever been brought to tears from a book, though I've come close once or twice. I can remember being shocked once or twice by descriptions of some quiet tragedy to the extent that in the most prominent case, I can remember the event perfectly, but can't even remember the name of the book anymore.

[Mauve Shirt]

Some scenes in the latest Dresden Files book nearly brought me to tears. And I did cry at the end of the 5th Harry Potter. The sixth and seventh left me dumbfounded, but the fifth one killed me (and Sirius.)

[Asta Kask]

Pets dying. Perhaps because I know my cat is getting old.

[Brother Oni]

I haven't shed any tears over books, due to the way I read them - switch brain off, scan text at speed.

I can quote back the plots, key events, names of characters and other things, but if you asked me "why was this scene so sad?" or "what was this character's motivation?", unless it was explicitly spelt out in the text, I wouldn't be able to answer you without re-reading it again with my brain switched on.

[Kindablue]

What's the point of spoiler tags if you don't say what book's about to be spoiled?

[factotum]

It's happened to me, but not recently--I cried at the end of the Hobbit, but I was only about 8 years old when I read it! Apart from that very clear memory I can't recall crying at a book. I'm sure it's *happened*, I just don't remember it...

[razark]

What's the point of spoiler tags if you don't say what book's about to be spoiled?

Obviously, you shouldn't be peeking at the spoilers unless you've already read every book.

[Riverdance]

Harry Potter Spoiler
When Fred died. I have never cried about another book but I still tear up when I think about it.

[The Underlord]

Closest one I got to tears is when in 'Where the red fern grows'
Little anne and Old dan die.

[Weezer]

Bridge to Terebithia was the first book that ever made me cry. Since then? So many. I tend to cry easy when I'm in particular moods and it happens enough that it doesn't really stick out in my memory when I think back on books.

[Marillion]

A couple times during The Name of the Wind.

When the man who looks after the street urchins is introduced. Elderly, infirm, and impoverished himself, he nevertheless spends his life caring for children that everyone else has abandoned, including some who are so sick or traumatized that they can't even leave their beds.

What what.

Also, "I don't sell used shoes."


And at the end of Good Omens,
when Aziraphale and Crowley are preparing to face Satan Himself with a flaming sword and a tire iron, respectively. Though those were more manly tears of awesomeness.

[IrnBruAddict]

Bit of a weird one but the one that most stands out to me is the end of Thump by Terry Pratchett

Towards the end Sam Vimes is dying alone down in a cave after nearly drowning. Death is watching him because not even he knows if Vimes will live or die. Barely alive, and possessed by a demon, he drags himself forward to find the dwarves the are on the run. As he is about to die, dwarf soldiers running towards him, he realises he will miss his son's bed time story for the first time ever. So he charges head first into them and destroys them left and right while shouting at the top of his voice "WHERE'S MY COW?" so loud his wife and son, crying in a tent near the battlefield, hear his voice echoing out of the caves. And as he finishes his story and the last of the fighters flee, he comes upon the old dwarves who were responsible for all the suffering everybody was going through. His mind full of blood and fury, the demon tries to get him to slaughter them when another figure appears in his heart. A Watchman, a cop. And it tells the demon that deep down Vimes is a good copper and will never cross that line of killing someone harmless. And while the old dwarves look on in terror he doesn't kill them. He ARRESTS them for what they did! Deep down, no matter what happened, no matter what tried to force him astray, he never stopped being a good cop.

It was tears of sadness that turned to manly tears of awesomeness. Never read any scene that good in any other book I know.

For some reason I'm more likely to cry at a computer game than at a book (mainly TWEWY: end of week 1, Blazblue CS: Noels canon story ending, and the worst was Okami: Issun and the world uniting in praying for Amaterasu against Yami)

[thubby]

bridge to terebithia
where the red fern grows
the fault in our stars

[Eurus]

The Hunger Games series made me tear up a bit, a few times. Hard to remember what parts, specifically, but it's a real gut-punch of a series at times.

[Melayl]

Joel Rosenberg's The Heir Apparent when Karl dies to save his son and the rest of them.

And in The Road to Ehvenor in the same series when Tennetty dies, too.

[Hattish Thing]

In Les Miserable, the book, Javerts suicide left me feeling very low...:frown:

[Lemonus]

I normally don't get very emotional about books, but Where the Red Fern Grows got me crying. I thinks it's the only book that's ever done that.

[THAC0]

Another vote for Where the Red Fern Grows.

I think a few times in the Malazan books, too, but I don't remember as clearly as WtRFG, even though that was almost two decades ago. Really stuck with me.

[Vacant]

In Les Miserable, the book, Javerts suicide left me feeling very low...:frown:

Really? Javert's end seemed downright upbeat compared to pretty much everything that happens to Fantine and Éponine.

[Alarra]

I cry really easily, I think. I mean, Gray's Anatomy often brings me to tears, let alone books. For example, I don't think I have read a single book by Lurlene McDaniels that didn't make me cry.

[Ravens_cry]

Very rarely has a book actually made me cry. A sense of otherworldly wonder and delight, yes, but not actually cry. In fact, the only example I can think of off hand is the ending of A Canticle of Leibowitz as Earth is consumed a second time in atomic fire, after only barely surviving the first.

[SamBurke]

Gonna have to go with The Count of Monte Cristo.


All throughout the book, the main character Edmund has only one motivation: get revenge on the three men who had tortured him for 14 years of his existence.

He gets revenge on two, finishing them off beautifully, and comes to the worst of the three: this man? Stole Edmund's fiance, the day before their marriage. So, he provokes him and provokes him, to get a duel. Edmund is known to be better at dueling; in fact, he's so good, that it's just a foregone conclusion.

The man's son, son also of Edmund's love, steps in, and defends his family's honor. Edmund knows he will kill this boy with ease...

Then, the woman begs Edmund to call everything off. So, Edmund does the only thing that can be done honorably: Edmund goes to the duel, knowing that he's hand trained this boy, and refuses to fire at him. He does this, knowing the boy will fire straight and true, killing him.


Also, if fanfics count:

My Little Dashie.

Pffffft. Everyone cries in My Little Dashie.


The majority of all MLP Sadfics.

Yeah, I know. I am way too emotional about ponies. Oh well...


Brohoof? /)(\

[An Enemy Spy]

The ending of Men at Arms did that to me. It remains my favorite Discworld book for having such a perfect ending.

[Juggling Goth]

It's non-fiction, but The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. It's about the life and death of the woman from whom the first immortal human cells were taken, and what happened to the cells, and what happened to her family.


For a long time, nobody knew who she was. "Helen Lane" was the most common guess at her name, and nobody really knew that we have polio vaccines and chemotherapy and most medical advances of the past sixty years because of a poor black woman who died young and left five kids behind her. I think I first heard of her in a Cracked article, something like 'People you've never heard of who've saved your life'.

The family are, frankly, pretty screwed up. I don't say that with any condemnation. I would be, too. They had no idea that the cells had been taken, and they didn't understand what happened to them. When they finally found out, all they knew was that some part of Henrietta was alive somewhere and tests were being done on it. None of them were educated to a point where they'd be able to understand cell science, and since they were all too poor to afford health insurance, they never really saw any benefit from the work on the cells. Her daughter Elsie died in an asylum; her other daughter Deborah was interviewed for the book a lot but died before it was published; her three sons are pretty angry about the whole business.

It's a wonderful book, and Henrietta's story really needed telling, but it depresses the hell out of me every time.

[Yanagi]

A Primate's Memoir, by Robert Sapolsky.

The author studies a baboon troop over many years. At the end of the book, the troop is decimated by tuberculosis contracted from eating human garbage. At the very last, the author's favorite, a low-ranked male whose life was always punctuated by comic missteps and pratfalls, dies. Unable to maintain his clinical detachment, he buries the baboon and recites Kaddish while standing over his grave.

I bawled.

[Juggling Goth]

A Primate's Memoir, by Robert Sapolsky.

I bawled.

Aw man, like Asta Kask says, anything where an animal dies. I just don't read any of those books in the bestseller list that are uplifting tales about animals. I just know the critter's gonna die in the end and I'm gonna start howling.

[fergo]

I'm sure I've cried at a few :smallredface: :smallfrown:. The one that comes to mind is the end of His Dark Materials... I'm sure these books have their haters but they came along at just the right time in my life that I'll always love them. Every time I read them, I pick up something new. And the last time I read them (hmm, maybe three years ago, so I was 18 :smallconfused:) I was so... * at the end of it I skipped a few days of college to recover.

* I can't really think of an apropriate word. Depressed isn't quite right...

I often get emotional during Terry Pratchett books, but I can't think of any I've cried over. The end of [i]Good Omens (and I'm talking about the last paragraph) always hits me.

But I barely get any reading done any more :smallfrown:. I miss it.

[Riverdance]

Also in Harry Potter:
when dobby died. Also when umbridge would't let harry play quidditch but those were just tears of rage.

Harry Potter seems to be the only book/series that I've cried over. Its not even my favorite series.

[Caesar]

Not enough 1984 in this thread. And by 1984, I mean the book by Orwell, not the year most posters in this thread were born after.

All in all, the most depressing, pessimistic, horrifying book written in modern times, with an ending so heartwrenching, it pulls out your innards along with your heart.

"Anything but rats, anything but that.. even her."

Edit: Spoilered that line, as it does give away the ending somewhat. Oh, and Ill toss in "The Road" for a second runner-up.

[Traab]

The 4th book in The Wheel of Time series, (I forget the name)

The final battle in the Two Rivers. The endless horde of trollocs and Fades are pressing in, the white cloaks have decided to betray them and not help the fight, and just as all seems lost, the women of the village come pouring out armed with kitchen knives and other assorted implements and reinforce their people, leading to victory! It wasnt so much a sad tears as pure excitement. Ive never verbally cheered reading a book before, but that came damn close.

[Balain]

I can't say that I have. My manager from my last job was brought to tears by one of the Harry potter books.

[Vitruviansquid]

If you can finish Of Mice and Men without crying... you are a monster or a robot.

[thubby]

If you can finish Of Mice and Men without crying... you are a monster or a robot.

oh, can i be a robot monster?
maybe mecha-godzilla :smallamused:

in all seriousness, i didn't care for that book, so it was hard to feel bad.

[The_Snark]

There's one part in Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds that makes me tear up every time I read it. It took me completely by surprise the first time, because for the most part the book is a lighthearted adventure story; there's danger and suspense and dramatic bits, but nothing that really dents the overall atmosphere of fun.

Except forthe chapter titled A Prayer to Ah Chen.

The titular prayer is composed by a father mourning his recently deceased young daughter. It's not conventionally eloquent, but it's very earnest and heartfelt; he reminisces about her, and enjoins her to behave well in the underworld and stay safe, and tries to say goodbye but can only manage "we miss you." Grief is hard to convey in writing, but... it worked. For me, at least.

I later learned that the prayer was real. At the end of the passage is a footnote directing the reader to a compilation of short texts and literary passages translated from Chinese; Mr. Hughart tweaked the circumstances of the daughter's death to fit the story, but the rest of it was written by a 17th-century Chinese father who had just lost his daughter to smallpox.

:smallfrown:

Pets dying. Perhaps because I know my cat is getting old.

Also this. I don't actually have pets at the moment, but I was very close to a pair of cats I had while growing up, and it still gets me.

[Cazaril]

I more often get teary for movie endings (like Saving Private Ryan) than for books, but the end of Harry Potter 7 definitely did it to me. :smallfrown:

[dehro]

I've cried several times...

with laughter...

reading Discworld novels.

[Inglenook]

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:
- when I realized the significance of Snape's "Look at me."
- the aftermath of the first assault on the castle, with Fred, Tonks, Lupin and random Colin Creevey deaths.
- "Will you stay with me?" "Always."
In The Green Mile:
- John Coffey's execution.
- the main character's wife being ripped to pieces in a trolley accident.
- the nursing home aide killing Mr. Jingles.
In The Neverending Story:
- pretty much everything after Bastian meets Dame Eyola.
In 1984:
- Winston and Julia meeting in the park, their love for one another completely obliterated.
I'm sure there are others, but these are the ones that came to me off the top of my head. :smallfrown:

[Alarra]

The last several Jodi Picoult books I've read I've been in tears before I was 40 pages in.