Question of the day (19th October).

What was the first book that made you cry, or at least feel very, very sad?

My answer:

I’ve been thinking about this for a while but can’t think of a book that was the first. While books often affect me strongly and I may easily feel sad if a book is sad, I don’t cry very easily at all because of a book even if I fee like I’d like to be able to sometimes, it’s just a super rare thing, same with movies and music. While on one hand I’m glad I’m not an easy cryer and at least in some part it is the effect of my own considerable efforts over the years of bottling things up, on the other hand I actually envy people who can cry when they’re moved by things as it seems a very healthy mechanism and seems to be generally seen as a very sincere reaction by people. So basically because it’s very frequently that a book moves me very deeply and I find it very sad, but at the same time ultra rare that it would make me cry, I can’t think of one particular example that would be either the first or even just one that would stand out particularly. I remember that the last book that I was crying a little bit when reading it was Maggie Hartley’s book Battered, Broken, Healed that I read last year, when for some unexplained reason one specific thing made me feel particularly sad, namely when the mum of a baby whom Maggie was taking care of at the time was telling Maggie about how whenever her daughter cried at night, her abusive husband wouldn’t let her see to her and how difficult it was for her and for little Jasmine as well. I don’t know why it made such a very strong impression, it’s definitely not my typical reaction even when I hear sad things like this and it’s not the most difficult thing I’ve heard definitely, but it just made me feel so sad I suddenly started crying but only a little bit. I guess I must have generally been feeling down.

Oh, yeah, now I remember a book that made me feel particularly sad, but it definitely wasn’t the first one, actually quite recent, and it also made me feel a whole spectrum of all sorts of feelings and, despite a rather difficult topic of the book, quite a few fragments of it also made me laugh a lot and overall the experience was very positive. It was Room by Emma Donoghue.

So, how about you? Also, are you easily moved by books at all? If so, is it to such a degree that you just easily absorb emotions that are in the book, or does it also mean that you cry easily when you read something particularly moving, be it positively or negatively? 🙂