Anything by Susan Wiggs (dubbed the Kleenex Queen)
“The Rocket” by Ray Bradbury. It’s a short story, but the only fiction that made me weep.
It’s about a poor man who builds a pretend rocket ship for his children to bring them joy and escapism. It has a kind of gospel quality in that it instructs the reader how to be a good father.
Terrific story!
Also “The Rocket Man” (also in The Illustrated Man.)
Sure is. Bradbury was one of the greatest short story writers of all time.
Charlotte’s Web.
Not a novel but Anne Frank’s diary.
Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes. Hit me hard in the feels.
Chasing Butterflies Charles Martin
It’s been eons since I read it, but books like Black Beauty.
Charlotte’s Web.
Non-fiction Ishi: Last of His Tribe by Theodora Kroeber
Fiction ‘Hotel On The Corner Of Bitter And Sweet’
Our high school English Lit teacher read us the last chapter of “The House at Pooh Corner” and the whole class teared up.
Night by Elie Wiesel. (Not a novel.)
Without Warning by Joel Rosenberg.
Definitely Charlotte’s Web. More recently, Feral Creatures by Kira Jane Buxton.
Resident horse expert, Judith Tarr, at Tor. com is doing a classic horse novel reread. Last week, she did BLACK BEAUTY, the most traumatic horse book from all our childhoods. The novel was the UNCLE TOM’S CABIN of the early days of the animal anticruelty movement, but I would never read it again.
I read something appalling, yesterday, about the same period. England had no protections in place for children, particularly children used as workers, so one enterprising lawyer used a dog protection law to press charges against some factory owner monster. This case shamed the English so much they clamored for laws to protect children. Women were considered property, though, for another fifty years or so.
I could never read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It’d rip my heart out.
At my age having lost most of my family, closest friends, and pets, I have a nearly impossible emotional wall to break down when reading fiction because fiction. “That sucks,” or “damn” is a strong emotional response from me. I can’t recall a book that brought me to sad tears in years, but I avoid books like that, anyway. Life is too depressing to seek it in fiction. I much prefer a book that makes me happy at the end.
My Guardienne has, for some reason, put up a barricade across this whole subject. I thought of the perfect book, then forgot the title before I could write it down. It will come to me . . .
Okay, I dredged up one. Maybe the same one. The story, Nobody Loves a Drunken Indian, by Claire Huffaker, is typical of those rooted in the no-escape cultural collision between “The Makers” and “The People.”
It’s not at the end, but in an earlier passage, we meet “She’ll-Be-Back-Pretty-Soon,” who sits by the road, waiting for his pretty, young wife to return from town, where she went shopping. She doesn’t appear, so, at the end of the day, he says, “She’ll be back pretty soon,” and goes home, just as he’s done every day, all these years.
Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, McCullers
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Greenberg
Where the Red Fern Grows. Read it as a young teen and could not believe the ending. Probably the first book I read in which the character experienced Loss.
The Art of Racing in the Rain
Where the Red Fern Grows
Yes. The Art of Racing in the Rain, for sure.
Anything by Charles Martin. Kleenex box per novel. Amazing southern fiction.
I didn’t cry at the end of To Kill A Mockingbird or Cry the Beloved Country when I read them, but the movie versions I did, especially the James Earl Jones version of Cry the Beloved Country.
Like Marilyn, I no longer read something that I know will make me sad…I experience too much of it in real life to read about it. Therefore, I have never read a Nicholas Sparks book…because someone you care about always dies.
Anything by Susan Wiggs (dubbed the Kleenex Queen)
“The Rocket” by Ray Bradbury. It’s a short story, but the only fiction that made me weep.
It’s about a poor man who builds a pretend rocket ship for his children to bring them joy and escapism. It has a kind of gospel quality in that it instructs the reader how to be a good father.
Terrific story!
Also “The Rocket Man” (also in The Illustrated Man.)
Sure is. Bradbury was one of the greatest short story writers of all time.
Charlotte’s Web.
Not a novel but Anne Frank’s diary.
Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes. Hit me hard in the feels.
Chasing Butterflies Charles Martin
It’s been eons since I read it, but books like Black Beauty.
Charlotte’s Web.
Non-fiction Ishi: Last of His Tribe by Theodora Kroeber
Fiction ‘Hotel On The Corner Of Bitter And Sweet’
Our high school English Lit teacher read us the last chapter of “The House at Pooh Corner” and the whole class teared up.
Night by Elie Wiesel. (Not a novel.)
Without Warning by Joel Rosenberg.
Definitely Charlotte’s Web. More recently, Feral Creatures by Kira Jane Buxton.
Resident horse expert, Judith Tarr, at Tor. com is doing a classic horse novel reread. Last week, she did BLACK BEAUTY, the most traumatic horse book from all our childhoods. The novel was the UNCLE TOM’S CABIN of the early days of the animal anticruelty movement, but I would never read it again.
I read something appalling, yesterday, about the same period. England had no protections in place for children, particularly children used as workers, so one enterprising lawyer used a dog protection law to press charges against some factory owner monster. This case shamed the English so much they clamored for laws to protect children. Women were considered property, though, for another fifty years or so.
I could never read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It’d rip my heart out.
At my age having lost most of my family, closest friends, and pets, I have a nearly impossible emotional wall to break down when reading fiction because fiction. “That sucks,” or “damn” is a strong emotional response from me. I can’t recall a book that brought me to sad tears in years, but I avoid books like that, anyway. Life is too depressing to seek it in fiction. I much prefer a book that makes me happy at the end.
My Guardienne has, for some reason, put up a barricade across this whole subject. I thought of the perfect book, then forgot the title before I could write it down. It will come to me . . .
Okay, I dredged up one. Maybe the same one. The story, Nobody Loves a Drunken Indian, by Claire Huffaker, is typical of those rooted in the no-escape cultural collision between “The Makers” and “The People.”
It’s not at the end, but in an earlier passage, we meet “She’ll-Be-Back-Pretty-Soon,” who sits by the road, waiting for his pretty, young wife to return from town, where she went shopping. She doesn’t appear, so, at the end of the day, he says, “She’ll be back pretty soon,” and goes home, just as he’s done every day, all these years.
Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, McCullers
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Greenberg
Where the Red Fern Grows. Read it as a young teen and could not believe the ending. Probably the first book I read in which the character experienced Loss.
The Art of Racing in the Rain
Where the Red Fern Grows
Yes. The Art of Racing in the Rain, for sure.
Anything by Charles Martin. Kleenex box per novel. Amazing southern fiction.
I didn’t cry at the end of To Kill A Mockingbird or Cry the Beloved Country when I read them, but the movie versions I did, especially the James Earl Jones version of Cry the Beloved Country.
Like Marilyn, I no longer read something that I know will make me sad…I experience too much of it in real life to read about it. Therefore, I have never read a Nicholas Sparks book…because someone you care about always dies.
Martin Eden by Jack London