Your cry-like-a-baby book?

I wept profusely at more than a few points while I was reading "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. Which was an issue since I read it while I lived in the dorms. Nothing more embarrassing than having a group of girls catch you crying like a baby because of a book.

I also shed some tears when I read I Am Legend.


How about you guys?

:cry:

i bawl for probably the last third of it.

where the red fern grows gets me too.

I was riding a city bus while reading this and had tears streaming down my face. I would have waited till I got home, had I known I would react so strongly.

A nuclear war has destroyed the Northern hemisphere, and this story takes place mostly in Australia where people are waiting for the radiation to drift down to them. It's about what these characters do while they're waiting. I'm getting all misty all over again jut thinking about it...

"The Yearling" when I was 12 years old. I still remember that. I sobbed for hours.

My brother made fun of me and got in trouble.

Lust for Life - the biographical novel of Vincent Van Gogh by Irving Stone. It was so sad and, of course, true.

I got suckered into reading it by a girl at work I was sharing the Wheel of Time series with at the time. Was a little stunned by my reaction to it.

But I've shed tears over:

"Snow Country", Yasunari Kawabata, about the doomed relationship between a wealthy (and rather cold) man and a fading geisha. The portrayal of the latter's self-awareness is heart-breaking.

"Sputnik Sweetheart", Haruki Murakami. It's got his trademark mixture of reality and the supernatural, but the female characters are stronger than usual (his women can sometimes feel like chess pieces, but not here). Loss, unrequited love, finding out who you are...

I think it's just coincidence that the two books I thought of first were Japanese.

"Flowers for Algernon", Daniel Keyes. I suspect this one needs no introduction. Yes, it's emotionally exploitative, but I was a teenager when I read it.