Oof, did I cry

i cried throughout large sections of Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead" this year. In recent years almost no other book has made me cry so it took me by surprise somewhat.

I cry at everything, but most recently I cried during No Great Mischief at a line about a dog who tried too hard and cared too much.

You would, perhaps, have to see it in context to truly appreciate it.

No. Dogs can generate pathos like a dynamo.

Poems get my tear ducts fired up. For some reason "The Road Less Travelled" by Robert Frost (possibly because my fav. English teacher read it to us before we all left school), "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath & "Futility" by Wilfred Owen.

The passage in a book that most makes me cry each time I read it is the scene in "Jane Eyre" when Helen Burns dies. "The long home ..." But I am rather sentimental.

the only two times i can remember crying reading--during george eliot's middlemarch and el doctorow's book of daniel

Jonathan Safran Foer's "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close."

I got teary at the end of "Charming Billy" (by Alice McDermott). Surprised me because I don't think a book had ever made me cry before (or since). It's not my favorite book or anything -- although it's very good -- but there was something about the way things came together at the end that did it.

the first time i ever cried from reading a book - and hardly ever have i since, since so many things have to be in place - was, i think, the part where richard feynman dies in james gleick's biography of him. if i were to go reference the thread on ile i think it would probably count as a case of being 'ambushed by unexpected emotion'.

Writing a letter to an ex recently

I am the wellspring of all tears, lately, so I'm trying to avoid books that bring it on -- isn't life enough? But a novel called LOVE IN THE ASYLUM recently reduced me to sniffles, and a poetic children's book called BASKET MOON did me in at the office.

I don't usually cry when it comes to books. The only one that ever reduced me to tears is Charlotte's Web.

I welled up a bit on the bus this morning reading Anne Roiphe's 'Married'. I don't even like the way she writes, but stuff about love and marriage and babies just gets to me somehow at the moment...

I got a bit sniffley in Guards! Guards! Guards! by Pratchett. Can't remember the last time I cried.

I'm a softie. I cry over things I read all the time. I think the last time was a newspaper article about Roger Clemens pitching a game for the Astros right after his mother died.

The last book I cried over was the very end to Joan Didion's Where I Was From. I don't remember what it was that did it but the tears flowed.

I just cried looking at a stack of books that I'm dying to read, but can't because I'm reading other books.

I also recently cried looking at a book I loved reading for the first time, because I know I'll never be able to read it the same way again.

Oh, and I sobbed watching "Lost" last night.

I cried at te end of love story, but then I was a little kid back then.

Just a couple of days ago I cried at this youtube vid of the 'grid plan' scene from The Cruise (Speed Levitch), especially the last 30 secs or so which are hilarioud but also kinda poignant, I guess... I still don't know why it made me cry, and I also remember crying during The Cruise when I saw it in the theatre 8 or 9 yrs ago!

I cried at the end of The Road. I'm so Oprah.

The last book (all three) that made me cry was The Fionavar Tapestry. I've come to realise that I'm quite a wuss.

I don't think crying at movies is the same thing as crying while reading, because movies seem sort of designed to be cried at? although the example I was about to give is imagistic. there was a (fairly bad, actually) profile of Pete Seeger in the New Yorker a while ago. I think maybe it was by Alex Ross. Anyway, there was no real narrative thread, but toward the end, the writer started to speculate on the possibly self-aggrandizing motivations behind strident activism of a certain type--it certainly wasn't a loving portrait of Seeger's politics, in other words. It also discussed how active Seeger was in antiwar protests circa the leadup to the Iraq war. The profile abruptly ended, though, with a description of Seeger standing alone in a downpour on a two-lane highway in the middle of upstate New York, holding up a sign. And from the way the profile had been headed, you kind of expect the sign to say something really cutting and nasty about the Bush administration's motivations for the war (which would have been completely fair as far as I'm concerned, but anyway.) The description of him standing there is perfectly done and saves the revelation for the final sentence: the sign Seeger's carrying just says, "Peace". I was reading the article on the train and had to really struggle not to completely lose it. As it was, I totally teared up.

oh my god, I found the article, on a Pete Seeger fansite! It's by Alec Wilkinson, not Alex Ross. I had somewhat mischaracterized the last paragraph, but it's still awesome. now that I've kind of ruined it, here it is:

[i]Here is a story told to me lately by a man named John Cronin, who is the director of the Pace Academy for the Environment, at Pace University. Cronin has known Seeger for thirty years. "About two winters ago, on Route 9 outside Beacon, one winter day, it was freezing—rainy and slushy, a miserable winter day—the war in Iraq is just heating up and the country's in a poor mood," Cronin said. "I'm driving north, and on the other side of the road I see from the back a tall, slim figure in a hood and coat. I'm looking, and I can tell it's Pete, He's standing there all by himself, and he's holding up a big piece of cardboard that clearly has something written on it. Cars and trucks are going by him. He's getting wet. He's holding the homemade sign above his head—he's very tall, and his chin is raised the way he does when he sings—and he's turning the sign in a semicircle, so that the drivers can see it as they pass, and some people are honking and waving at him, and some people are giving him the finger. He's eighty-four years old. I know he's got some purpose, of course, but I don't know what it is. What struck me is that, whatever his intentions are, and obviously he wants people to notice what he's doing, he wants to make an impression—anyway, whatever they are, he doesn't call the newspapers and say, 'I'm Pete Seeger, here's what I'm going to do.' He doesn't cultivate publicity. That isn't what he does. He's far more modest than that. He would never make a fuss. He's just standing out there in the cold and the sleet like a scarecrow. I go a little bit down the road, so that I can turn and come back, and when I get him in view again, this solitary and elderly figure, I see that what he's written on the sign is 'Peace.'"