Which of these books won't bring me to tears?

September 24, 2006 9:27 AM

Which of these books won't bring me to tears?

Okay fine, I'm sensitive, alright?

I'm currently working through Wordwing's list of top 30 books [ Read Before You Die ]. I'm in the middle of The Lovely Bones and for some reason it keeps making me cry. I can't be seen to cry in the school cafeteria or on the bus or other public places for obvious, not-wanting-to-appear-like-a-loon, keep-the-stiff-upper-lip reasons. But I still need to be able to read/have a book with me, or I'll go spare.

Which of the other books won't make be bawl? I have a bad feeling about Christmas Carol [Tiny Tim, right?]. But obvious stuff like LOTR, the Bible, Clockwork Orange won't upset me.

And related [no really] anybody got any tips for NOT bawling when encountering a, uh, touching book? It's really embarrassing.

posted by Chorus to sports, hobbies, & recreation (28 comments total)

If Clockwork Orange won't make you cry, you should be fine with Lord of the Flies or 1984. Unless you're, you know, really political. :)

Do you cry at really happy things too?
posted by danb at 9:29 AM on September 24, 2006

Are you male or female? Either way, crying is nothing to be ashamed of. Shows your sensitive side.
posted by reklaw at 9:35 AM on September 24, 2006

No reason you can't be reading a couple of books, or more, at once. You get a different sense of some books, as a reader, if you spread them out over a couple of weeks, instead of plowing straight through, cover to cover. This also gives you some productive time in public settings with biographies, history, and perhaps even technical material, whilst you keep the tearjerkers on your bedside table.

Another technique that used to help an ex-wife I had, who was far too fond of bodice-rippers, was to slow way down, conciously, when she came to particularly heart rending passages. It was, I think, a matter of having a simple reading technique ready to hand, by which she could excercise concious control, and of it practically slowing down the stream of images in her head to something manageable.

But I have to say, this latter technique made some stories with real pathos much worse when she encountered it. I remember a Sunday morning when she first read Mark Twain's A True Story, Just As I Heard It at about 50 words a minute, and ran us out of paper towels with her tears, and then grinned so broadly at the conclusion, her face hurt all afternoon.

Reader's judgement, that's what's called for: what to read where, and how fast.
posted by paulsc at 9:40 AM on September 24, 2006

Khalil Gibran's The Prophet should be safe. I found it more thought-provoking than emotional. Unfortunately, it's also very, very short...
posted by monochromaticgirl at 9:44 AM on September 24, 2006

The Curious Incident of the Dog... didn't make me cry, and I really enjoyed it. 1984... Actually, parts of that might.

Neat list. I'm going to check our library for some of the suggested titles.
posted by Savannah at 9:46 AM on September 24, 2006

Are you reading them in order? I.e., have you already read everything on the list before The Lovely Bones? I don't want to make redundant recommendations... but I guess I will anyway.

1984 is powerfully emotional, and very topical these days. I could see one getting rather worked up over it, but it's not one to tug on the heartstrings, necessarily. It depends on what precisely makes you start bawling. The final scenes are devastatingly emotional, so you might want to save the last 20 pages or so for at home.

All Quiet on the Western Front is an unrelenting barrage of despair, and I love it to death... but I would say that its emotional character isn't such that typically move people to tears. Very gripping, though, one of my favorite books of all time, and quite a quick read.

The Prophet is really a series of parables, I couldn't see anyone getting too weepy on account of it.

And a word of warning on A Clockwork Orange... I don't know that this won't make you start bawling either. Once again, it depends on what is making you so emotionally responsive to The Lovely Bones, but the dystopian novels tend to get to me, personally.

Lord of the Rings occasionally brings me to tears with the beauty of its prose, but it isn't the kind of crying that will make someone look at you funny... that is, you can hide it.

His Dark Materials is one that I haven't read, but based on what I know of it, it appears to be a fantasy tale with religious underpinnings... possibly a good candidate for keeping one's composure in public.

I didn't actually read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime either, but it's about someone with autism, so how emotional can it be? (ah cha cha) Sorry.

Once again, while I haven't read them, I have a feeling that novels such as Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, and Pride & Prejudice will be quite the grand weepers, based on movie adaptations, Kate Bush songs, and various tales related to me by friends of the female persuasion.

I would say that if you aren't looking to be greatly emotionally affected, you might want to look for books that aren't in the list of top 30 you're supposed to read before you die... if they are widely considered to be so good, they are more than likely highly emotional works.
posted by synaesthetichaze at 9:47 AM on September 24, 2006 [1 favorite]

Yeah yeah, I'm a girl.

The part that first set me off crying with The Lovely Bones was a throwaway scene, something about dogs in Heaven.

I'm actually fine with violence and drama, they don't affect me - just when there's animals involved [I still can't read Animal Farm] or things get sappy, on come the waterworks.

I don't like romances/historicals [I found the Jane Eyre-type books to be more boring than tear-jerking]. And yes I cry at happy things too... darnsarnit. Even if I smile too much, on come the tears.

I haven't been reading the list in order - I just read whatever books I have to hand. All I've read so far is Mockingbird [yep that made me cry towards the end], Clockwork Orange [no tears - woo!], Jane Eyre [snooze] and now I'm on Lovely Bones [utter waterworks].

Regarding picking something else to read - a nice list of 30 titles like that, when done, will be a personal goal I set myself, so it's important for me to finish all 30. But considering how Lovely Bones is now in the freezer...
posted by Chorus at 10:04 AM on September 24, 2006

I actually get weepy when reading His Dark Materials. The conclusion of each book in the trilogy is very emotionally wrenching, even if the first 3/4 or so of the book is just rip-roaring fantasy-adventure.

Pride and Prejudice shouldn't be a real tearjerker, despite its reputation as the Greatest Romance of All Time. Jane Austen is not one for sentimentality, and it's a very funny book...her contemporaries called it "light and bright and sparkling."
posted by clair-de-lune at 10:13 AM on September 24, 2006

Sounds like 1984, All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Prophet would definitely be safe for you to read in public. No "sap" just "drama" as you put it.

Also, I can't believe I missed Lord of the Flies on that list... absolutely!
posted by synaesthetichaze at 10:15 AM on September 24, 2006

The end of the final book of the His Dark Materials trilogy is bound to have anyone crying. Ditto Time Traveler's Wife.

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is pretty grim but not weepy. The Alchemist left me cold, but YMMV.

The end of Tess is either heartbreaking or intensely irritating depending on how you feel about Hardy's plot devices.

Middlemarch goes on and on and on. I felt relief at the end.

You're probably safe with Life of Pi, assuming you can cope with big man eating tigers getting their just desserts.
posted by TrashyRambo at 10:31 AM on September 24, 2006

If The Lovely Bones makes you cry, I'll second the suggestion to read the last book of the His Dark Materials trilogy at home.

If you feel yourself getting weepy and truly need an emergency escape, start thinking more broadly (what exactly is the writer doing here to make me react this way?) or, if possible, satirically. Mentally cast unlikely people in the character roles, or add them to the environment. Choose cringeworthy candidates for slash fiction. Or (tm) my sister, imagine the characters' LiveJournal community.

As a fellow reader, though? I like to see people reacting to what they're reading. It's more likely to make me peek at the book cover than to think they're at all strange.
posted by gnomeloaf at 11:54 AM on September 24, 2006

Will not make you cry:
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (please think of this more as humor than romance -- I love this though I dislike Jane Eyre, and hate Gone with the wind)
The Bible (by God!)
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
1984 by George Orwell

Will make you cry:
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (probably try of all the Dickens -- he goes in for sentimentallity)

You will hate:
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (far more boring than Jane Eyre, and twice as long)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (about like Jane Eyre)
posted by Margalo Epps at 12:10 PM on September 24, 2006

OMG... I am in the last 50 page of the last book of His Dark Materials. I guess I better not finish it off on the train.

To Kill a Mocking Bird made me cry, but only at the very end. The Lovely Bones made me cry, too, but it's so freaking good.

I liked Curious Incident, and it didn't make me cry.

Jane Eyre and Pride & Predjudice were always things I thought I would hate, but I read them in the last two years and loved them. No crying.
posted by kimdog at 1:49 PM on September 24, 2006

Life of Pi
posted by jengineer at 1:52 PM on September 24, 2006

Wind in the Willows has plenty of emotional scenes involving animals -- if these make you cry, I would be careful with this one.
posted by inkyz at 2:05 PM on September 24, 2006

When I was younger, I was a communist. I read about the lives of people I then considered heroes, such as Lenin and Trotsky. In the course of this reading I happened upon a passage by Lenin in which he wrote about not being able to listen to a particular piece of music because it would move him to tears and leave him unable to dish out the brutality that the political circumstances demanded.

At the time, I nodded and agreed. A revolutionary must be tough. A revolutionary must make sacrifices. No room for wimpiness or softness in this process of hammering out a better world. It seemed perfectly reasonable to me at the time.

Now that I am older, I realize how completely full of shit I was. The ability to place ourselves in anothers' shoes, to be moved by the tribulations of others, even imaginary characters in a novel, is a sign of humanity. Emotional responsiveness and the accompanying vulerability are things that separate us from knuckle-dragging savagery.

I'm sorry that crying feels uncomfortable and embarrasing for you. Perhaps you could read them in private?
posted by jason's_planet at 3:34 PM on September 24, 2006

His Dark Materials books make me a little weepy towards the end of each of them, mostly the second and especially the third books. Pride and Prejudice always gets me at the scene with the letter. It's also pretty funny, especially the father, but I missed some of the humor on the first reading because of Austin's writing style. I tried reading the Bronte sister's books, but couldn't get through them, and I hated Gone With the Wind too.

For reference, I had tears streaming down my face for pretty much the entire second half of Lovely Bones. They started at some point and then just didn't stop. The happy parts just made me cry harder.
posted by good for you! at 5:11 PM on September 24, 2006

The Time Traveller's Wife was a very emotional experience for me, but please read it anyway, maybe in private.
posted by tatiana wishbone at 6:09 PM on September 24, 2006

The Time Traveler's Wife will make you cry, unless it just bores you. It's very sappy.
posted by NSSG at 6:10 PM on September 24, 2006

Read Pride and Prejudice! It's understated and bitingly funny and the characters are endearing and interesting and not always predictable. Do NOT watch a movie version first, and don't get a plot summary from anyone if you don't already know the plot. There may be a point, just after halfway, where you can't put the book down. When you finish it, you should be suffused with a warm glow.

Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are not as pleasing, for reasons that will be clear if you read them. Not required. But do read P & P.

Lord of the Flies = cruelty to animals and children, by children
1984 = some parts will be distressing, most will be ok.
TKAM = ditto
His Dark Materials = fun wizardry; have only read the first one but nothing tear-inducing comes to mind
Grapes of Wrath = dire, grinding poverty and some of the terrible stuff that comes with it

Offhand, I would not say this list is really the 30 books to read before you die, but rather the books that librarians feel safe recommending because they're reasonably smart books and a lot of people enjoy them. So if you end up just not reading some of them, you will not be missing out on the Great Literature You Must Read. But do read P&P.
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:03 PM on September 24, 2006

The last bit of His Dark Materials will make you bawl your eyes out. Bawl! It's wonderful, but definitely don't read it on a train. Save it for the bath.

And while Pride and Prejudice will also make you cry toward the end, it is absolutely worth reading. I too find Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Gone With the Wind terribly boring.

If you haven't already read To Kill a Mockingbird, don't do so in public, but do read it.
posted by brina at 8:17 PM on September 24, 2006

I'm going to third of fourth the tear-jerker status of the last book of the His Dark Materials trilogy. I ended up crying in public. Great trilogy, though. Otherwise, nothing else on the list made me cry.
posted by lizjohn at 8:23 PM on September 24, 2006

I doubt this is a helpful response, but I wouldn't assume that just because The Lovely Bones made you cry that any of those other books will make you cry The Lovely Bones is a book with a sneaky, weird, uncanny power that is dedicated to making readers cry.

I made the mistake of reading the book as the very first work of fiction I had picked up in about three years. I'd been reading solid nonfiction and pophistory, all comfortably abstract, intellectual and distant. Then I pick up this freaking painful tearjerker of a novel, on a friend's recommendation, and spent a week on the beach sobbing uncontrollably.

No other book since has done that to me, and I doubt any of the others will hit you that hard, either.
posted by Miko at 8:39 PM on September 24, 2006

LOTR trilogy has made me cry every time I read it. In different places and always at the end. These three books account for massive crying over my lifetime. No other books on that list combined make up as much crying as the LOTR trilogy. And I rather liked some of the other books. But, incidently I love Lord of the Rings because it has the ability to transport me and yes, even weep.
posted by typewriter at 10:21 PM on September 24, 2006

"The Prophet" always gets me in the chapter about children (it's getting to me, just thinking about it... "the house of tomorrow" and all that... (I'm a guy, if that matters...with two kids).

I read "The Master And Margarita" too many years ago for specifics, but I only remember laughing.

There wasn't much about His Dark Materials that I remember wanting to cry about. YMMV!

I'm glad you've read To Kill A Mockingbird...one of the finest pieces of American writing ever, in my opinion.
posted by lhauser at 10:56 PM on September 24, 2006

I'm not surprised that The Lovely Bones made you cry - it's horrible. I thought it was a very poor book, but the violence is still upsetting.

On a side note, I wouldn't feel ashamed of crying whilst reading in public. I sometimes do it and feel oddly pleased that I am reading something that can make me flout social norms and bring my emotions to the fore. Just keep your head down and ride it out. Or stop reading for a bit and then pick the book up again.

However, for non-tear-jerkers:

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. This is a wonderful book that, despite its seemingly gloomy subject-matter, is quite uplifting. Any sad emotions are more in the line of depressing that actually upsetting.

1984. This isn't so much sad as horrificly bleak. I don't think I cried when I read it.

Winnie the Pooh. Obviously, this will be fine (though you may cry with laughter).

The Grapes of Wrath. Am about a hundred pages in and no tears so far.
posted by pollystark at 6:05 AM on September 25, 2006

I loved Gone With The Wind. I suggest you at least give it a shot, keeping in mind that it looks like other people found it boring. It will probably make you cry at certain points, though.
I found Jane Eyre kind of boring, and Wuthering Heights was intolerable to me for a variety of reasons, the largest of which was the entire plot.

Sometimes a book can make you cry at something unexpected. I suggest that no matter what you read, you carry a magazine with you so you can switch to that whenever you feel tears starting with your current book.
posted by Sprout the Vulgarian at 7:00 AM on September 25, 2006

As a (deployed, male, "sensitive") Soldier, I feel your pain keenly. Of all things, I was ambushed by The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat in the chow hall the other day. Feel free to read the entire book in public, in fact I think all humans should read that book, but stay away from the final section on "The Simple" in public. That is a section for private reading.

I just read Middlemarch a week or two ago, and I can recommend it. Which is sort of odd, now that I think about it -- I certainly cared for the characters, and there's some real pathos in it, but I didn't cry. Or even get a little sniffly! And no one else has mentioned it yet, so... you should read it. Now!

Caveat: I'm a huge nerd for Elliot.
posted by kavasa at 1:38 PM on September 25, 2006