Be Excellent To Each Other

I just finished reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road and was reduced to a blubbering wreck near the end. I'm talking fat tears rolling down my cheeks, suppressed sobs and the manful sucking in of air. Embarrassingly, I was on a train at the time, prompting the young lady next to me to move seats like I was some kind of psycho.

This has literally never happened to me before with any piece of fiction -- including when I was a kiddie. (I was famous for remaining steely-eyed during the horse death scene in Never Ending Story for example, or the bit where the farmer brains the otter in Ring of Bright Water.)

So, what films, books or TV shows have got you guys welling up in a manner similar to my McCarthy-induced breakdown? ...Or do I just need to harden the fuck up?

"It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry."

A Coal Train obv.

When in Robin Hobb's "Assassin" books. Like a huge blubbering wreck for days and days and days. I avoided the 2nd trilogy of hers because the first one upset me a lot, then she pulls that trick and ruins me.

Generally, I cry at the drop of a hat at any sort of TV/book. I'm intensely easily upset. I keep saying to the missus I'll be terrible at our wedding because I'll be sobbing my eyes out.

The only (fictional) book to make me cry was 'The Book Thief'. It's incredibly good, but the ending (even though you know what will happen) is so, so sad.

Birdsong, Sebastien Faulks

Watership down the first time I read it.

I rarely cry at sad bits these days, I do end up welling up when anything that is supposed to be patriotic or when something happens that is supposed to make you proud of the hero.

So yeah, I normally cry with pride rather than sadness.

Malc

I'm not sure if I have ever cried reading a book, but films about the WWI/II do me in, man, for no real reason that I can make sense of.

I nearly got choked up in The Thin Red Line. Can't remember which scene it was though. Also, the end of Brokeback Mountain.

I can't watch that film without getting a lump in my throat.

Me too. It's so obvious the gay guy from Gimme Gimme Gimme fancies that asian WPC, but she never notices.

the only one i remember was the "Into the Wild" film. It's not that i cried a lot, i just got overly sensitive for the rest of the day.

Gnnh...

I sob like a little girl at films, but almost never at books. One that's made me come close was the first time I read Rasselas, when...



Books don't make me cry, but they often fill me with a profound sorrow. Apart from Oscar Wilde's The Nightingale and the Rose, and The Canterville Ghost, which are just astonishingly beautiful and sad. And De Profundis, his letter to Lord Douglas when he was in prison, which isn't really a book but is definitely the most beautiful, incredible thing I've ever read. Just make sure you get the full version.

Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake almost had me but nothing else has come close.

Some interesting tear-jerkers here. The majority seems to be fantasy and sci-fi stuff, which probably goes to say something, although I'm not exactly sure what.

So has anyone here actually read The Road? Did it get to you?

I'm going to search it out now based on your recommendation. Unless my book swap sender is reading and would like to choose that to send to me?

That not enough people have read 'The Book Thief'.

Smart plan. They're about to release a movie too, starring Viggo whatshisname from Lord of the Rings.

If you want to see his man's penis, try A History of Violence. I only mention it because when myself and a small group of friends saw it at the cinema, one of them was drunk, and woke up for the one scene where Viggo wrestles naked in a sauna with another man. As such that is his only overriding memory of what is otherwise a very good film.

As you were. Although I notice from a certain comparison based web site that The Road is only £3.99 from Waterstones.

No. The nude wrestling scene is actually from Viggo and Cronenberg's follow-up film, Eastern Promises. Both flicks are pretty good mind. (I think his wang crops up in History of Violence too).

I am idiot. You are quite correct. I am getting a lot of this recently. brain thinks one thing, and mouth says another (or hands type another in this case).

I'm going to blame late nights and stress, but now I shall slowly retire from the web.

Blitzcat, lovely book, made me a bit sad
Dragonlance chronicles

I have more but can't think of any others at the moment

Where did you cry in Dragonlance, Shinster?

Don't read Birdsong then - it has some truly harrowing chapters dealing with the trench warfare of WWI

Not everyone can have a hero's death, man

Ooh! I just remembered another one. When Boxer got sent to the glue factory in Animal Farm.

SPOILERS MAN! I'm reading that book

Eek. Sorry man. Based on previous posts, I thought spoilers were fair game.

To be fair though, shouldn't you have read that one in high school?

We never did Animal Farm at school. We did Macbeth, Julius Caesar, The War Orphan, Educating Rita, err...and some others.

To be fair, I was kidding

GCSE English was Mockingbird, Macbeth, Jane Eyre

I did Romeo and Juliet, Lord of the Flies and something else.

We're talking about senior year here, yeah? Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Seamus Heaney and Peter Goldsworthy's Maestro. (The latter is a semi-autobiographical book about an Australian guy growing up in Darwin. Full of sex and swearing. Some Mary Whitehouse types tried to get it banned.)

Siddhartha had me sniffling a few times. Absolutely beautiful imagery and sentiments in that'un.

We did J.B. "cocking" Priestley. Apparently he died here. That reminds me, I must go and find the spot where he died, so that I can curl one out over it.

Same bit as Craster kleenex remained by the bedside for the duration of the chronicles.
Cried at Rasitlins bit with that woman aswell (they had a baby together, remember?)
Then Sturm I sniffled at, but not as much as Flint

I am Tas

No need to cry for Sturm. His was a heroes death.

*turns to stare into the distance, cape flapping in the wind*

the Sopranos episode i saw yeasterday left me very depressed


no spoilers pleased, i haven't seen the 6th season yet

1984 also had the same effect

The sex scenes were good, were they?

Filfy Stu