/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11093402]

ITT: Books that left you feeling emotional.

Not necessarily crying, but a book that made you reflect on something personal or difficult, a book that never really leaves you.

I just finished Stoner and I've had a few tears because of how Stoner turns out after his operation, in and out of consciousness and awareness, and how he dies reading his own book with that passion for reading he once had even if he can't quite read it properly. The book reminded me a lot of my grandfather and the ending just fucking hit me like a train.

[Anonymous No.11093436]

Les Miserables: When Eponine delivers the letter to Marius on the barricade before dying, Marius realising Eponine loved him all this time but needed to step away from him; when Marius realises that Jean Valjean was always a hero after his talk with Thenardier as the crook comes clean; Jean Valjean giving a young Cosette a doll and telling her to go play; Jean Valjean considering whether to hand himself over to the law when he's done something wrong and hands himself over no matter what; Jean Valjean stealing bread; anything to do with Fantine

Don Quixote: Sancho Panza's last words to Don Quixote about becoming shepherds, singing songs and having more adventures that will unfortunately never come as Don Quixote dies

Watership Down: When old Hazel looks over his warren on Watership Down, proud that his friends have had children and they're playing safely nearby, he goes to rest quietly and never wakes up, taken away by the black rabbit of Inle to jump over all the hills and to become a member of the black rabbit's owsla/warren

[Anonymous No.11093460]

the temple of the golden pavillion

[Anonymous No.11093462]

>>11093402
>>11093436
don't use spoilers this is /lit/ not /genrefiction/

[Anonymous No.11093463]

Obvious choices but Of Mice and Men, Death of a Salesman and A View from the Bridge hit me hard

[Anonymous No.11093482]

>>11093462
I'm only using spoilers because I know not everyone has read those books and when I have talked about these books in the past without spoiler tags other anons complained I ruined the book for them. I'd rather use them and play it safe. I'm sure that if I didn't I would be spoiling the books out there for someone

[Anonymous No.11093484]

>>11093463
Dude I can't even think about Death of a Salesman without muttering, "fuck..."

[Anonymous No.11093499]

>>11093463
>>11093484
I need to read Death of a Salesman. I read it two years ago and really can't remember it too well. All I remember is that Willy Loman is delusional

[Anonymous No.11093501]

>>11093482
If you don't use spoilers you get free (You)'s and you punish pseuds for not reading. Win-win

[Anonymous No.11093516]

>>11093501
as fun as that sounds I don't think it'd be fair on the anons who do want to read those books but haven't yet got around to doing so or haven't had the time to read them

[Anonymous No.11093517]

[Anonymous No.11093536]

>>11093402
Tolstoy, “Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth”

[Anonymous No.11093546]

> Ishmael and Queequeg's friendship
> Captain Ahab's motivation for hunting Moby Dick
> the ship that's sailing the ocean in search of the captain's lost son
> the ending

This book is a real rollercoaster. I don't know why it's becoming a meme on here to post "just bought this" etc etc but I hope that doesn't put people off from reading it because it really is a treat.

[Anonymous No.11093769]

>>11093402
I've seen Stoner posted here more frequently recently and I'm really glad more people are reading it here. Fucking great book

[Anonymous No.11094076]

The last 50 pages of Kerouac's "Big Sur" fucked me up. I think he knew he wasn't going to be around for much longer.

[Anonymous No.11094085]

I don't feel "emotional" because I'm not a woman

[Anonymous No.11094150]

>>11093436
Couldn't agree more with Les Miserables, such a emotionally loaded book.

[Anonymous No.11094209]

>>11093769
It crops up every few years it seems like, I remember reading it after seeing it posted here about three years ago.

[Anonymous No.11094331]

>>11093402
Norwegian Wood.

Stoner's resolute passivity is something I resonated with.

[Anonymous No.11094410]

the Bell Jar

[Anonymous No.11094709]

>>11093501

I can't imagine being this insecure.

[Anonymous No.11094748]

The chapter when Bolkonsky dies was probably the most powerful piece of lit I’ve ever read

[Anonymous No.11094763]

>>11094709
you can, otherwise you wouldn't be here

[Anonymous No.11094776]

>>11093402

Stoner. From the first chapter, breaking with his humble agrarian roots, the character dealt with familial themes that run through my own life.

Moby-Dick when the sweet breeze is rolling in and Starbuck almost convinces a momentarily remorseful Ahab to turn for Nantucket. But the man just can't run from fate or fight his vengeful nature. Especially the single tear falling into the ocean.

The Once and Future King how the Orkneys' characters are laid out as children when they kill the unicorn. Their stories unfold in tragedies tied right into their reactions in that event.

Paradise Lost. Something about Satan "being abstracted" for a moment from his own evil looking at Eve's primordial, innocent beauty and immediately coming back to resentment and hatred by wanting possession just gets me.

The Silmarillion. Or, technically, the part before that, I forget what it's called. When Aüle created the Dwarves and it spells out the difference between his properly reverential act of creation vs. Melkor's desire for dominion as a son imitating his father. And Eru refrains from punishing him out of love and understanding for his innocent transgression.

Everything about Levin in Anna Karenina.

[Anonymous No.11094786]

>>11094763

Hahaha, you certainly got me there. Although, I'm not motivated to secure my ego by withholding courtesy from those who come here out of an honest desire to expand and share their love of literature.

[Anonymous No.11094990]

>>11093769
>>11094209
I think it's been talked about before but it's pewdiepie's influence that got people to read it and that's a good thing. His comments on books might be superficial but if it gets people reading I can't complain.

[Anonymous No.11095006]

>>11094748
Just read that part, how he lost his will to live literally made me tear up and no one short of Houellebecq made me feel like that just from fiction.

[Anonymous No.11095028]

>>11093402
I have never finished a book that i didn't feel emotionally connected to. Why would anyone do this in leisure? Even for school I refused to read anything that I wasn't feeling all sorts of things about.

[Anonymous No.11095167]

>>11094085
> being so autistically insecure that you can't empathize

[Anonymous No.11095188]

>>11094990
I'm not subscribed to the guy so I didn't realise he covered it, it was just in my backlog for a few years and thought i'd finally read it. Agreed though, i can't complain if more people are reading the good stuff

[Anonymous No.11095279]

>>11095028
I tend to agree with you, yet I recently read Foucault's Pendulum. I had reached a point where I was deciding whether or not I should finish it because, while a decent read I wasn't exactly connecting emotionally to it, and, I probably shouldn't have, I went online to see what others and the author had to say about it. As it turns out, he wrote it as kind of a criticism of people who become so obsessed with the quest for knowledge that it leads them to delusion, etc. Strangely, this convinced me to continue and, as it turns out, the next chapter is the Lia chapter where she gives Casaubon her advice (and, I assume, this is Eco talking directly to the reader) on "the plan" and life, in general, basically floored me and now I am happy to have read the book strictly because of that chapter. I found it particularly great because it came directly at the place in the book that I was ready to move on. Perhaps it simply spoke to me because it came at a time in my life when I am on my own little quest for life's answers. Regardless that chapter saved the book for me and I would have missed it had I decided to not push through.

[Anonymous No.11095296]

>>11094990
so it's all but confirmed that that swedish faggot browses /lit/, then? that makes me kinda sad

[Anonymous No.11095381]

>>11094990
really? is there anything he doesn’t steal from 4chan?

[Anonymous No.11095938]

>>11094085

>so handicapped by a fear of appearing feminine that he confuses emotion brought about by intellectual ecstasis with weakness
>has to posture on an anonymous image board
>either lying and projecting or in earnest and repressing

Surely, others are at fault.

[Anonymous No.11096519]

>>11093402
Nausea 100%

[Anonymous No.11096552]

>>11093402
Same as you with Stoner, OP. When I was reading his final scene I was tearing up.

The part where he bonded with his daughter who had her little desk in his office and then Edith fucks it all up made me really angry as well.

[Anonymous No.11096575]

>>11095296

[Anonymous No.11096579]

>>11096575

didnt mean to quote pls no bully

[Anonymous No.11096614]

the ending of this still makes me tear up a little when I think about it years after I read it..

[Anonymous No.11098387]

>>11094748
>that scene with him seeing Anatole with an amputated leg, and then forgiving him and making peace with the world
My god, that was one of the most powerful scene in all of literature.

[Anonymous No.11098400]

>>11096552
Yeah, man, it's heartbreaking. The final time he'd see his daughter, the fact he doesn't get to see his grandchild enough, that little line about how Stoner and Edith were silently forgiving each other for not being kinder to each other, that shit had me in fucking tears.

I don't think five years ago this book would have hit me so hard as it had when I finished it.

[Anonymous No.11098928]

you'll literally laugh and cry

[Anonymous No.11098956]

the bit where the father reads her letter about her holiday where she banally recounts what's happening in a way that tries to put a positive spin on it, but he understands how miserable she is and then looks at the other people happy people in the park and feels hatred and anger towards everything
the bit where the father comes home drunk and has an intensely real conversation with the mother about the fact that it some ways they hate their dull, stupid, ugly child who has ruined their life
the bit at the end where she gets back and everyone pretends to be cheerful and life goes back to normal and she goes to her room and quietly cries to herself about how utterly hopeless her life is
this book was too real for me

[Anonymous No.11098964]

>>11098956
>when the narrator makes a point of saying that she has practiced how to cry quietly so that no one can hear her
astounding book

[Anonymous No.11101002]

"A Song Of Stone", Iain Banks.

[Anonymous No.11101250]

Finished this a few days ago. The last few chapters got me pretty choked up.
I read Of Mice and Men recently too and the story got me a bit choked up but I didn't connect with it as well.

[Anonymous No.11101373]

>>11101002
Is this the same Iain Banks who writes scifi?

[Anonymous No.11101380]

Stoner fucking sucks.

[Anonymous No.11101399]

>>11101380
this!

[Anonymous No.11101417]

>>11101373
nope thats his brother iain M banks

[Anonymous No.11101427]

>never cried once from intellectually stimulating works
>cried from a cheesy weeb game called "To the Moon"

My brain is fucking weird. The most emotional I've ever gotten from literature was probably Macbeth's final soliloquy after Lady Macbeth dies

>She should have died hereafter;
>There would have been a time for such a word.
>— To-morrow, and to-morrow, and >to-morrow,
>Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
>To the last syllable of recorded time;
>And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
>The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
>Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
>That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
>And then is heard no more. It is a tale
>Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
>Signifying nothing.

That kind of fatalism really hit hard for me when I was a drunken and suicidal asshole in hs. Still didn't cry to that, but that fucking weeb game man... I have no idea.

[Anonymous No.11101430]

>>11101373
>>11101380
cool, any recommendations?

[Anonymous No.11101433]

>>11101427
Try Tempest

[Anonymous No.11101451]

>>11101433
Read it, seemed more anti-climatic than anything

[Anonymous No.11101456]

>>11101427
>My brain is fucking weird.
Its called stupidity.

[Anonymous No.11101464]

>>11101451
yeh it had some plot holes but som e of the dialogue was cool

[Anonymous No.11101471]

>>11101456
>If you don't cry at everything you're stupid
This is something a stupid person would say

[Anonymous No.11101488]

>>11101471
Yes and its only you whos making that non-sequiter from your own original incoherent babble
Stick to video games

[Anonymous No.11101509]

>>11093402
1984's interrogation scene is some pretty powerful stuff.

[Anonymous No.11101535]

>>11093499
I read it in high school and I remember that it was so well-written and so vivid in presentation that my mind swears that I saw it as a play or as a movie or something, but no, I only read it.

However, since I was just a snotnosed little teen shit most of the play went over my head and the only thing I also took away was Willy was a delusional jackass.

I reread it recently now that I'm more mature, and oh my god it cuts deep. Willy isn't even an ass anymore, he's just pitiful and depressing.

[Baby bastard No.11101544]

Lord of the flies broke my heart. The ending was incredibly emotional, but what I found the saddest was how the Officer saw Jack as a 'Little boy'. This really opened my eyes: Jack didn't want to return home because if he did, he'd be knocked down a few pegs in the social ladder, from power.
Another scene that made me emotional was the parts leading up to Simon's death. He was the only form of innocence on the island, and his death showed us that all innocence was lost.
Anyway, LOTF was an incredible book, and it was a fantastic read. Even now, it's easily one of my favourite classics. (I was twelve okay)

[Anonymous No.11101607]

>>11093402
Oblivion by Wallace. Also most of The Pale King. Magic Mountain. The Good Earth by Buck

[Anonymous No.11101618]

>>11094150
Only the first quarter of it imo

[Anonymous No.11101738]

>>11101417
Lmao

[Anonymous No.11101743]

>>11101380
Wrong.

[Anonymous No.11101756]

>>11101427
The xbox 360 game Lost Odyssey really hit me hard, it's full of emotional and well written short stories you can find written by some award winning author i can't remember who though

Need to play To The Moon ,got it on GOG.

[Anonymous No.11101776]

>>11101618
But so much powerful and emotional shit goes down, man. I felt myself choking when Marius' grandfather couldn't quite bring himself to apologise to Marius and also when they reunite

[Anonymous No.11101782]

>>11101756
>>11101427
both of you play LISA immediately. i am 100% serious when I say it is lit-tier tragedy in game form.

[Anonymous No.11101818]

>>11101488
>whos
>Missusing non-sequitur
Yikes. Why do brainlets always project?

[Anonymous No.11101832]

>>11101782
Heard about it, I though it was supposed to me more of a humorous game though?

[Anonymous No.11101835]

This thread cinforms /lit/ doesn't read, and when it does its suprised that Literature can sometimes even make you feel stuff like vidya and TV!

[Anonymous No.11101853]

>>11101832
at its core, the game's story is absolutely a tragedy. but that said, yep there's quite a few comedy sections, and the humor in the game is really, really funny if you're into sort of dark comedy.

that's LISA The Painful though. The Joyful, which is sort of the epilogue of the series, is just a straight descent into fucking misery that never stops. i've never had any creative work manage to make me so depressed I got physically sick, but the joyful did that to me. worth it.

[Anonymous No.11101858]

>>11101835
>cinforms
>how dare you do something other than read literature

I also go to the gym and hang out with friends. Sometimes I will watch a movie

[Anonymous No.11101879]

End of TBK got me good. Whenever I see an expression of ultimate goodness and innocence I lose it. The world is shit

[Anonymous No.11102151]

>not necessarily crying

A Farewell to Arms really got me. It was obviously foreshadowed by something about miscarriages and losing lovers just fucking kills me

[Anonymous No.11102223]

>>11093463
Salesman was like a comedy to me when I read it a few years ago. I still laugh really hard when I think about that pen being stolen and he just can't figure out why he stole that pen. I love it.

[Anonymous No.11102236]

>>11094076
The whole thing kind of read like a suicide note

[Anonymous No.11102241]

>>11094209
? Is this ironic? Stoner is one of the most discussed books on this board.

[Anonymous No.11103898]

>>11101782
Will do, been meaning to for a while

[Anonymous No.11103909]

>>11101835
Nobody is saying they're surprised literature can stir up emotions, you fucking dunce. It's a thread appreciating the fact that it can do that. How do you miss the point of the thread this much?

[Anonymous No.11103965]

>>11101858
What is that pic from?