Viewing 40 posts - 81 through 120 (of 130 total)
  • Which books(if any) have moved you…
  • lyons
    Free Member

    oh, tey not to read reviews of never let me go, as a lot of them in my mind would spoil the story…

    timdrayton
    Free Member

    I read the chronicles of thomas covenant when i was about 12 and for some reason this poem from it made me blubber (must have been all the hormones)

    nice tolkieny type fantasy series this, but not particularly high brow.

    I second the mission (albeit a film) a lot to do with ennio morricone and a stunning performance by de niro me thinks

    anyway the poem from the chronicles of thomas covenant…..

    “My heart has rooms that sigh with dust
    And ashes in the hearth.
    They must be cleaned and blown away
    By daylight’s breath.
    But I cannot essay the task,
    For even dust to me is dear;
    For dust and ashes still recall,
    My love was here

    “I know not how to say Farewell,
    When Farewell is the word
    That stays alone for me to say
    Or will be heard.
    But I cannot speak out that word
    Or ever let my loved one go
    How can I bear it that these rooms
    Are empty so?

    “I sit among the dust and hope
    That dust will cover me.
    I stir the ashes in the hearth,
    Though cold they be.
    I cannot bear to close the door,
    To seal my loneliness away
    While dust and ashes yet remain
    Of my love’s day.”

    CountZero
    Full Member

    Hi Foxy, good thread this. I usually mainly read SF, plus an increasing number of factual historical books, but there have been a couple of books that have left profound impressions on me, to the extent that it was over ten years before I could read it again. That was The Wizard Of The Pidgeons, by Megan Lindholm. Based in Seattle, it’s about a man haunted by ghosts of Vietnam. DrJ mentioned The Lovely Bones, which did leave me very emotional indeed, and a third book that left me very disturbed was When Rabbit Howls, which I’m damned sure I’ll probably never be able to get through again. It’s about a girl who develops multiple personalities as a way to cope with the effects of the most appalling abuse by her father.

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    slowmedown
    Free Member

    Some great reads on this thread, Time travellers wife, Papillon, Birdsong, and Touching the void have all moved me.

    Recently I have read The Flamboya Tree by Clara Olink Kelly, perhaps not the most inspired use of language, but it is an amazing account of life in the Japanese camps for women, and the difference a Mothers love can make. I was moved to tears from the first few pages onwards.

    clareymorris
    Full Member

    Funnily enough both me and MrCM both said Lovely Bones (I sobbed for at least half an hour at the end), but also The Bridges of Madison County for me, every time I read it!!!

    TenMen
    Free Member

    More votes for Catch 22 and Birdsong. The book that has upset me more than anything is also the Time Travellers Wife, but the book that has most disturbed/intrigued me is The Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks.

    Munqe-chick
    Free Member

    Pretty much every book mentioned on this thread I’ve read! get through about 2 a week, the joys of shift work!

    I would 2nd (or 22nd!) The Time Travellers Wife, Life of Pi, Child 44.

    some others are :
    “the boy in the striped pyjamas” John Boyne. Only thing is they’ve changed the cover to promote the movie and it gives the topic away. I read it when I had no clue but absolutley heart moving … you will sit still for hours whils you think about it!

    “The Glass Palace” Amitav Ghosh.
    “The Disappearing of Katarina Linden” helen grant.

    I could go on but those are my favourites!

    Munqe-chick
    Free Member

    ANything by Christopher Brookmyre .. the best were:
    “a tale etched in hard black pencil”

    RichPenny
    Free Member

    Lots of Steinbeck is incredibly moving. Personally I found his dedication to Ed Ricketts from Log from The Sea of Cortez the saddest. He was the inspiration behind the central character in Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday, which I read immediately prior to the dedication and absolutely adored. It was a bit disturbing actually, really liking the character, then experiencing simultaneously the joy of his basis in the real world and the tragedy of his early death.

    Hemmingway can be harrowing, especially the endings of Farewell to Arms and Old Man and the Sea.
    To be disturbed, I like to read Will Self 🙂

    RudeBoy
    Free Member

    I don’t read books any more. I used to read all the time, as a child (no TV). I just find reading owt longer than a few paragraphs a pain, now.

    I read tons of books right up until my late teens. But I spose the one that’s ‘moved’ me the most has to be 1984. Prophetic. The scene where Winston is remembering his childhood; the moment where his mother and sister are taken away. So utterly, utterly sad.

    Munqe-chick
    Free Member

    Just thought of the one I finished this week which was awesome and moving and last 50 pages was just breathtaking
    Beatrice Colin “The Luminous Life of lilly Aphrodite”.

    Munqe-chick
    Free Member

    Kim Edwards “The Memory Keepers Daughter” I imagine that’s more a women’s book without being chick lit!

    Bunnyhop
    Full Member

    As a child ‘Heidi’ made me cry. Oh and ‘black beauty’
    Ahh memories.

    avdave2
    Full Member

    I’ve not read Touching the Void but was lucky enough to be working on a conference where Joe Simpson was the guest speaker. He’d been booked by one of the managers who was into climbing. The audience were sales reps whose only interest in life seemed to be what car they qualified for, I don’t think many of them spent much time outside let alone went anywhere near a hill let alone a mountain. Anyway despite this they and I sat riveted to our seats for an hour and a half hearing the story at first hand. I’ve never read it because I can’t imagine it matching up to hearing it from the man himself, but I should.

    The Time Travellers Wife is the book mentioned here that surprised me most about just how good it was.

    jwr
    Full Member

    Of the books I’ve read recently, I found “Boy in the Striped Pajamas” by John Boyne to be the most moving.

    -j

    ourmaninthenorth
    Full Member

    Lots of novels move me – recently, the novella The Legend of the Holy Drinker, by Joseph Roth.

    Non-fiction was The Escape Artist, by Matt Seaton. The sense of loss was quite visceral.

    Though the last but one play I watched – Three Sisters by Chekov – had me choking back the tears. Wonderful.

    Singlespeedpunk
    Free Member

    but the book that has most disturbed/intrigued me is The Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks.

    Add to that The Player of Games and Consider Phelbas. Very disterbing in their own ways. I am trying to get the wife to read Use of Weapons but she is very anti sci-fi which is a shame.

    Sophies World (can’t remember author) and Nightwatch (yes, a Pratchett book) are bothe really good, infact TP is pretty good at getting to the emotional heart of what it is to be human (or troll, or dwarf) and populates his books with people not “characters”

    Life of Pi was good but no tears, I will read the Time travelers wife when I get my copy back!

    Not read American Psycho as the wife read it and banned me from reading it as it was so unpleasant but readable at the same time. Considering the content she covered in her degree (peadophiles and other unpleasant mental illness) it must be pretty bad.

    One that I will have to search out is a real life account of an undercover female soldier in 1970’s northern Ireland…really good insight to what it was like with out all the testostorone sloshing around! Although she did have a big brass pair….

    SSP

    ourmaninthenorth
    Full Member

    Not read American Psycho as the wife read it and banned me from reading it as it was so unpleasant but readable at the same time. Considering the content she covered in her degree (peadophiles and other unpleasant mental illness) it must be pretty bad.

    Depends how literally you take your books. It’s a sharp satire on selfishness in late C20th America. It’s an excellent book. Read it.

    Worth reading along with Bonfire of the Vanities, and most of JG Ballard’s modern and post-modern dystopian literature.

    Singlespeedpunk
    Free Member

    She saw the satire but the way that you were routing for the main character even when he started doing really nasty stuff was disturbing (but very well written)

    SSP

    RudeBoy
    Free Member

    Wunundred!

    ourmaninthenorth
    Full Member

    the way that you were routing for the main character

    Ah. i never did. Just found him to be a socio (rather than psycho)path. Oh, and it’s all tempered by the hand of the editor as he seems to be experiencing it all via the medium of a dream.

    FoxyChick
    Free Member

    Bunnyhop…laughing…one of my earliest memories is of watching “Heidi” on TV, and there was a scene where she has picked some wild flowers and taken them to Grandfather, and when they fall out of her apron they are all dead! I remember doing that ‘I’m-not-really-crying-there’s-something-in-my-eye’ kind of crying…must have been all of 5!! 8)

    CountZero
    Full Member

    Reading someone else mention Sir Terry of Pratchett reminded me of his book Hatful of Stars, a lovely book, a little more… gentle, I suppose, compared to Terry’s usual books, but still with his sharp sense of humour. I got right to the last couple of pages, where the heroine, Tiffany, dances with bees who’ve formed the shape of a human. Sounds daft written like that but the image presentedon the page had me totally welling up.
    Regarding Alice Sebold’s Lovely Bones, I really hope the film that Peter Jackson is making matches the book. If it does, I think I might go to an afternoon showing where I can quietly blub without being seen, and get away with wearing dark glasses on the way out. 8)

    timber
    Full Member

    Time travellers wife again, very catchy book, started off reading it over the girlfriends shoulder and ended up getting my own copy and finishing it first – albeit, she was French reading a book in a foreign language – very engaging book with a lot of page shuffling.

    Graham Harvey – The Killing of the Countryside was a thinker book and Danny Wallace – Yes Man, quite an eye opener to opportunities, haven’t dared watch the film for fear of ruining the illusion.

    Not that emotional over books, but suppose I read more factual and humour stuff.

    samuri
    Free Member

    Yep, I’d recommend American Psycho as an excellent read but it is terrible stuff. You have to approach it with an open and forgiving mind. And a couple of scenes shook me completely, stuff of nightmares.

    Another one mentioned above which I loved was ‘I am Legend’, very good book.

    B.A.Nana
    Free Member

    Fictional books like American Psycho have never ‘moved’ me or affected me, because they are fiction. American Psycho was disturbing prehaps, but true life accounts of the horror and dispair that some people have actually had to endure or witness (ie. Touching the Void) are very moving IMO. I can’t say that I have ever been truely moved or affected by a fictional book.

    tyger
    Free Member

    Highly recommend The Book Thief – incredible, Time travellers wife, Papillon and Birdsong also great reads.

    barnsleymitch
    Free Member

    Cheers to ourmaninthenorth – the only one on here to mention the escape artist – I was in bits after reading it.
    Another one that really got to me was GB1984 by David Peace – brought back a lot of uncomfortable memories about the miners strike.
    Oh, and try ‘The book of lost things’ by John Connoly and ‘The night country’ by Stewart O’Nan.
    Eeh, it’s like Richard and Judy’s book club on here…

    jojoA1
    Free Member

    I’d concurr with Betty Blue and The Grapes of Wrath, but the book I’ve read recently that has moved me to tears was “The Reader”. The part where he meets her again at the prison.

    I struggled with We Need to Talk About Kevin because my training made me wonder what the mother and father were doing or not doing but not acknowledging, that was creating such a disturbed young person. In my experience socio/psychopaths are hugely a product of their environment and faulty early attachment. I couldn’t accept that this child was just born ‘evil’. A good read, nonetheless.

    DrJ
    Full Member

    Regarding Alice Sebold’s Lovely Bones, I really hope the film that Peter Jackson is making matches the book. If it does, I think I might go to an afternoon showing where I can quietly blub without being seen, and get away with wearing dark glasses on the way out.

    Film of Lovely Bones? Hmm… I foresee a new thread : “Books they never should have tried to make into films”.

    (By the way, what do you think of her new book Almost Moon ? I thought it was pants for the first half, and really good for the second half.)

    finbar
    Free Member

    I’ve read many of the books mentioned, but i would have answered “none” had i not read ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ last month. Really welled up at the end.

    ourmaninthenorth
    Full Member

    I couldn’t accept that this child was just born ‘evil’.

    Mrs North has read it. I think it’s the book that has really got her back into readuing in the last few years.

    I disagree that humans are not inately evil. The idea that we’re all born neither good nor bad, and then are entirely the subject of our environment I find impossible to accept. It assumes that there is nothing inate in us, and that we are just empty vessels into which others pour their own values, insecurities and f***-ups (which they too must have got from somewhere else, right?).

    I’m not suggesting this is an original sin argument (not having a faith, I find that irrelevant), but I can’t accept that we are all equally capable of brutality given a certain set of environmental factors – there must be more to a person that means that person A will turn out one way and, for the same influences, person B will turn out a different way.

    jojoA1
    Free Member

    OMITN, then we’ll have to agree to differ. I don’t dispute genetic predisposition to certain personality traits having a degree of influence, but I strongly believe in the ‘nurture’ side of personality development.

    bigeyedbeans
    Free Member

    moving slightly OT but for tears of laughter and laughing out loud in public while reading i nominate some of the jeeves and wooster stories

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    Nice to see so many people share the same view as me of Grapes of Wrath. Utterly wonderful piece of writing and not a single word too many written on the last page. The perfect ending.

    Birdsong was very good (kick-started my interest in the two world wars and I now read lots of factual accounts of them) but it certainly didn’t move me like GoW.

    FoxyChick
    Free Member

    Jojo…I too “struggled” with We need to talk about Kevin, and that is why I can’t stop thinking about it.
    At no point in the book does the mother describe herself as a good mother. In fact, if anything, she describes herself as being very coldy detached from Kevin. This to me is why it is such a good read. It is so out of the ordinary and thought provoking.
    In 20 yrs of teaching I have encountered 1 boy, aged 7, who I would never be alone with in a classroom. He appreared to be pure evil; the kind of child who would push another child into a door, close it on their fingers, and then laugh. He too has a lovely younger sister!

    I have to say I also struggled with Time traveller’s wife, as I found it very heavy going and could only read it in small chunks! But I absolutely loved it.

    mt
    Free Member

    On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
    Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee – ?
    Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
    there are others but these stand out.

    for me all weepers.

    Great thread making a list of stuff I’ve not read.

    tink81
    Free Member

    Things Fall Apart really got to me. As did the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, especially after visiting Auschwitz.

    avdave2
    Full Member

    mastiles_fanylion I read The grapes of Wrath over 20 years ago. I still remember getting to the last page while travelling in to poly on the number 73 and having an almost overwhelming urge to read it out to the rest of the bus. Luckily I managed to restrain myself and thus still have my liberty and don’t have to spend my days looking out of the windows of some institution. Should have done it anyway, if I ever read anything like it again I will.

    trailmonkey
    Full Member

    For whom the bell tolls

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