Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die discussion

I keep a note of all the books that have made me cry:

Loyalty in Death by J.D. Robb
A Long Long WayA Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
An Imperfect Lens: A Novel by Anne Roiphe
Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog by John Grogan
Katherine by Anya Seton
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Passion: A Novel of the Romantic Poets by Jude Morgan
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Lady Macbeth by Susan Fraser King
The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz
The Host by Stephenie Meyer
What was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
Lover Avenged by J.R. Ward
Small Wars by Sadie Jones
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer
Battle Cry by Leon Uris
Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear
How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway
Reaper by Rachel Vincent
The School of Night by Louis Bayard
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir
Podkayne of Mars by Robert A. Heinlein
On the Beach by Nevil Shute
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
The Dogs of Christmas by W. Bruce Cameron
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones
The Honor of the Queen by David Weber
Survivor In Death by J.D. Robb
Suspect by Robert Crais

in fact, not many books made me cry,
- "Germinal" by Emile Zola
- "Captain Corelli's Mandolin", by Louis de Bernières
- "Et après" by Guillaume Musso
- and "A Quiet Belief in Angels" by R.J.Ellory

Well I just finished Les Miserables and I was blubbing in the bath.

Nicola wrote: "Well I just finished Les Miserables and I was blubbing in the bath."

Oh yes. How could I forget about this one? I read this earlier this year, and of course there were tears.

Nicola wrote: "Well I just finished Les Miserables and I was blubbing in the bath."

Hope you didn't get it too wet!!

I'm not a cryer(sometimes I wish I was, though!) but if I was it would be Half of A Yellow Sun. It's about the Biafran war, and my father lived through it. So it's not surprising that it was emotional for me. Here's my review of it https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Same here, Michael. I don't usually cry that much, though sometimes my eyes "wet" when a character dies but I guess that's normal. Like in the last novel I read where the father was left to die in the cold cottage when the rest of the family had to leave during the famine. Then next the girl died for eating a bit too much and too fast, then the mother fell on the snow and the little boy was left alone in the world. In the spring they would be buried in mass graves with all the other nameless famine victims... And knowing that this happened for real less than 150 years ago.

But I often get emotional when reading about WWII. MY father lived through that as a boy and I only have think what would have happened IF...

And I knew there was something about Biafra that I had heard about (apart from the war and famine) so I had to check: their national anthem used the tune of Sibelius' Finlandia, that many think should be Finland's national anthem. (The current one is nothing special. Sorry all Estonians, with whom we share it...) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOSaT...

I also noticed another connection: the father of the Swedish pilot Carl Gustaf von Rosen, who organized help missions to Biafra in 1969, was the same man who gave the Finnish Airforce her first airplane in 1918 during our Civil War. (von Rosen's good luck charm, the swastika, was painted on the plane and it became the sign of Finnish planes, long before there were Nazis to take it as their own. It's still used in some flags, actually.) And the younger von Rosen also flew as a volunteer for Finland in the Winter War, even buying three planes for us. I didn't know that...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gus...

I should read that book, I even have a copy of it, but I'm afraid that it would be too sad for me...

Let me just add The Once and Future King. I bawled! Admittedly I cry fairly easily but this was something out of the common way.

I cried at Timbuktu by Paul Auster. On an airplane. That was when I swore off any books about animals!

Tom wrote: "I cried at Timbuktu by Paul Auster. On an airplane. That was when I swore off any books about animals!"

LOL! I can't do that. I see a dog on the cover of a book and I'm hooked!

Tom wrote: "I cried at Timbuktu by Paul Auster. On an airplane. That was when I swore off any books about animals!"

Oh, Tom, I know what you mean! They always die in the end!

Tom wrote: "I cried at Timbuktu by Paul Auster. On an airplane. That was when I swore off any books about animals!"

Great. That one is on my TBR pile. Thanks for the heads-up.

Half of A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.