Books have never made me shed a tear. I partially think I haven't come across the right book yet, but maybe I lack that sense of empathy needed for literature to have that effect on me too.
Have you ever shed a tear reading literature, anons? What books have had that effect on you?
It's an obvious choice but Steinbeck's Of Mice & Men nearly got me.
Norwegian Wood from Murakami made me cry. When I read it I just broke up with my girlfriend and themes of the book where very relevant for me. More books of Murakami made me shed a little tear.
Williams' Stoner. It's upsetting how relatable it is.
Empathy is the overruling factor in feeling a profound or impassioned connection to the point of being brought to tears.
You're moved because you relate it to your own life, like and The Road made me shed a tear. Hopelessly strained relationship between father and son.
Empathy is one of the hot topics in philosophy right now.
The Dead from Dubliners made me lose my breathe.
I really need to re-read Dubliners. I read it last year and remember enjoying it but I can't for the life of me remember The Dead.
>lose my breathe
2/3 of the way through this, had a tear in my eye about 10 minutes ago when reading about his miserable existence in the university and the battleground that is his home
The ending of The Book of Ebenezer Le Page.
Such a beautiful moment, to look back at a life and think that it's all alright.
Reading about the meager existence of akaky akakievich and how happy/excited he got about a new coat, even enjoying restricting himself to get it made me feel. Then when he lost it I teared up.
Redwall used to really fuck me up when I was young.
I well up reading 90% of books to be honest, doesn't take much to get me going.
Books don't have an effect on me. I just read them to increase my social capital within my social life.
It sounds arrogant but I'm just really insecure and want to belittle people
I cry at the injustice Agamemnon did to Achilles every time.
"Cosette," Book Three: Fulfilment of the Promise Made to the Departed in Les Miserables had me weep silently. When Cosette is sent in the dark the fetch a bucket of water. Hugo is such a fucking emotional writer and everything in that scene is absolutely perfect.
Infinite Jest made me be cry.
From how bad it was?
>The death of Lady Cregga
...
Ada mad me cry. Not at the plot, per se. More at how it was arranged. There was something inexorable to it, and how completely wasted Van was at the end, pretending to have Ada. The realization, and appreciation, of that inexorability was what did me in.
I know that feel user.
>tfw he starts talking about the rabbits one last time
*It's cultural capital actually
Try Jennifer Egan
The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. Some descriptions in the Song of Roland. The last pages of the Book of the Short Sun.
those last sentences make me feel something in my gut every time
I've cried at a few things:
>Don Quixote
>Fathers and Sons
>The Idiot
>Crime and Punishment
>The Brothers Karamazov
>The Iliad
>Metamorphoses
>Poems of Sappho
This happens for me when sympathetic characters go through some kind of injustice or suffering (cf. etymology of sympathetic) and/or display great humanity in an affecting way. Examples for me have included Quixote, Alyosha Karamazov, and Mario Incandenza.
What parts of Brothers Karamazov and Don Quixote caused it?
I had only the last two chapters left to read one cold morning last year, and I had settled in my favourite reading spot (the shitter--even when I don't have to shit I sit on it with my pants on and I read), when I got the news that my father had died. Even up to that point I had been seeing him in Stoner, giving Stoner his face, unconsciously or not. I put the phone down and I finished the book. Those of you who have read it will know that it got to me. It hit me pretty hard. He was Stoner's age and had just retired.
Alyosha: the way he responds to those who mistreat him, like the boy who bites his finger, along with his brokenness and turmoil upon the death of Zosima
Quixote: some of the futility of his good intentions (with which I can relate more than I care to), along with the end
Exactly the same with me; I think the very end of Karamazov got me as well, for a similar reason.
jesus, there you go reminding me of the overcoat. That might just be the GOAT short story.
>Don Quixote
What part? The ending? That was a real "woah" moment for me, not tear jerking, though
Yeah, the ending, along with one of the novellas within. I can't tell you for sure which it was, but I have the fondest feelings for the captive story, so it was probably that one. It's such a wonderful book that it was just impossible not to cry at the end, with so many adventures gone through, to such a conclusion.
If this book doesn't make your eyes water you have no soul.
This is another good choice.
Same here. I think sensitive types like us are just those who can truly experience and appreciate the sublime when reading literature, watching film, or viewing pieces of art. I feel truly sorry for those dear souls who cannot be moved by beauty.
Ilyushechka's funeral, mostly because of the frantic helpless actions of his father. He was such a pitiful character.
>I think sensitive types like us are just those who can truly experience and appreciate the sublime when reading literature, watching film, or viewing pieces of art. I feel truly sorry for those dear souls who cannot be moved by beauty.
I'm glad to find someone else who feels this way. It seems like most people don't understand it, which makes me very sad - it seems to me that life would be quite empty without it. Although it can be hard for me to achieve the necessary immersion with books sometimes.
Thank God for LiS.
>Ilyushechka's father
Yes him too (Im btw). It hit home on a recent reread for serious reasons.
I have a hard time reading the last few pages of A Happy Death by Camus. I completely lost it on my first read. And even having read it 4-5 times now, I still cry at the end.
The Road also made me tear up. Stories about fathers generally get to me, despite the fact that I have a great relationship with my father; I suppose it's just an area of my life that I cherish and am particularly sensitive to in others' lives.
I also teared up at the end of The Metamorphosis, partly for similar reasons. That book is just so damn tragic
Femanon detected
>tfw you always have to click on grimshaw threads because his paintings are too comfy to not look at
The Tin Drum got me last night with the end of the Polish Post-office chapters.
every book i've ever read has made me cry at least 3 times
doctor faustus was the last thing to have a huge emotional effect on me
>Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
>That time may cease, and midnight never come;
>Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
>Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
>A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
>That Faustus may repent and save his soul!
not even the saddest steinbeck ending
>t-timshel
That empathy is a learnable skill tho. Protip: learn a bit about act, then apply that to empathizing with characters.
>It hit home on a recent reread for serious reasons.
Care to explain?
To respond to your other post I was also moved by Alyosha's treatment of the children. It didn't move me to tears, but he's the type of character that I find inspiring.
>it seems to me that life would be quite empty without it
I agree. Thankfully my stepdad encouraged me because he would cry sometimes when we watched movies together. I used to restrain myself all the time. But I learned at a young age that it was OK to be emotional in such a way -- at least in private.
The thing with the boy and his father had to do with an uncanny resonance with real life when I reread it recently. It's meaningless to anyone else I'm sure, but the similarities were striking to me: my son was attacked, by the same number of people, I'm the same age as the father, there was a Good Samaritan involved (although presumably my son didn't bite his finger). And then I read the section two days later. It was a spooky, too real, put the book down, hug your kid when you see him kind of moment. (And I got an echo of it when the Good Samaritan pericope came up in the lectionary this past Sunday.)
nah
I read this book under the same circumstances user, definitely cried as well
Sickert>Grimshaw
Sonya's monologue at the end of Uncle Vanya gets me almost literally every time I read it. No shit.
The last scene of Oedipus the King when he embraces his daughters one last time.
Man, don't get me started
Crime & Punishment is beautiful, isn't it?
You speak truth, user. I love that painting so much.
How did Steinbeck manage so many works that carry such emotional impact?
Perhaps I'm the only one that felt nothing from this.
Never shed a tear, but Kazuo Ishiguro's "Remains of the Day" is a damn good book.
those last few lines of Ulysses tho
Very much so. A lot of people don't care for the prologue, but I've always been fond of it because it really provides a wonderful cathartic release from the previous 500 pages of tension.
I had to put this book down in public several times because I was almost gushing, I don't think anyone noticed.
It only took me a handful of sittings to finish it but I think I cried in about every tingle one. The first bit which really got to me was when Archer Sloane tells Stoner he's going to be a teacher, no matter what, and that's because Stoner's 'in love' with literature. I can't even explain why but I completely lost it, something captured in those lines was so extremely beautiful.
The part with the boy and his father was just disturbingly similar to something that happened with my son recently (minus the finger biting), right before I read the section
> Drogo is posted to the remote outpost overlooking a desolate Tartar desert; he spends his career waiting for the barbarian horde rumored to live beyond the desert. Without noticing, Drogo finds that in his watch over the fort he has let years and decades pass and that, while his old friends in the city have had children, married, and lived full lives, he has come away with nothing except solidarity with his fellow soldiers in their long, patient vigil. When the attack by the Tartars finally arrives, Drogo gets ill and the new chieftain of the fortress dismisses him. Drogo, on his way back home, dies lonely in an inn by committing suicide.
>suicide
Where did you get that?
Didn't he shoot himself? That's how I remember it.
Poor Folk did it for me.
The part that got me was when him and Grace are laughing at something silly in his study. If I remember correctly it's the only part on the book we see him give a genuine laugh.
It's sad at that part of the book because we know how bonds between all parents and children lose a certain sense of purity as time passes.
It's even sadder when we realise later on that Stoner will inevitably lose his daughter to Edith and that moment they shared becomes confined to the past, serving as a reminder of the future that could never be.
Very much this desu.
Damn it, I can't add spoiler tags from this crap phone.
Anyway, without saying too much, the way I remember it, it happened naturally and slowly in that inn room. It was not not a, umm, sudden act. I don't have the book with me though.
Nevermind, looked it up. The last few paragraphs(and the last one especially) sounded to me like an implied suicide, particularly the "He gives himself courage [...] [and] smiles". Might be a fault of the translation, though.
De unde ai știut că sunt român?
Eu am citit-o în engleză. Chiar și așa, cred că din ultimele paragrafe rezultă că este vorba despre o moarte naturală, ce vine încet dar sigur, pâș pâș. Vezi și mențiunea cu absența durerii fizice. Nu se simțise rău cu ceva timp înainte să ajungă la han? Eu cred că dna cu coasa era pe cale să vină singură, fără ajutorul pistolului.
Oricum nu contează chiar așa de mult în aprecierea cărții pe de-a-ntregul, nu?
Să sperăm că dacă am scris în română nu mai e nevoie de spoiler tags.
De unde sa stiu ca esti romin? Coincidenta stranie, heh.
In fine, eu am citit versiunea romineasca si mie-mi dadea impresia unei sinucideri, sinucidere care ar fi fost pertinenta drept epilog.
Nu stiu cum e in versiunea englezeasca, dar pe linga ultimul paragraf, mai e si sintagma "/se va/ savirsi" care mie-mi induce ideea nu a unei pasivitati a mortii naturale, ci a reflexivitatii sinuciderii.
>Oricum nu contează chiar așa de mult în aprecierea cărții pe de-a-ntregul, nu?
Normal. Consider mai important simtamintul cititorului fata de intentia autorului.
I nearly did while reading Don Quijote, Anna Karenina and Petrarca's sonnets, but never really.
Listen to music for the feels, books are for the thinks (generally).