Random query of the day

[tree_and_leaf]

Having been reminded, by discussion on wemyss' journal, of the wonders of Anthony Price (and those of you who don't know them, should), it also occurs to me that Tomorrow's Ghost is one of the few books I've cried over. I don't, as it happens, cry very easily, and when I do it's usually more to do with fatigue than emotion, but there you are: Tomorrow's Ghost, the end of Effi Briest, and the final chapter of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (not, however, the death scene in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe).*

Which makes me wonder what books or scenes in books other people find particularly affecting?

* If we bring films into it, then we must add Ring of Bright Water - I was fond of otters, and the killing of a pet one as a pest came as a bit of a shock at eight - and Spock's death scene in Star Trek II.

Comments

[gramarye1971]

I definitely cried at the end of Silver on the Tree -- I was not ready for Susan Cooper's fantastic world to end on me like that. I also got a bit sniffly at the end of Watership Down, and there are sections of the James Herriot books that still get to me. I think I'm definitely more affected by animals than people, on the whole.

For films, the opening sequence of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with the Luftwaffe raids over London just floored me. The scene in Empire of the Sun where the kamikaze pilots take off never fails to turn me into a soppy mess. And even though the vast majority of Star Trek: Generations was laughable, I always find myself sobbing uncontrollably at the very last scene where Data finds Spot alive. Animals more than people again, I suppose.

[tree_and_leaf]

I thought the opening scene of LWW was excellent - though I was too busy (a) being reminded of the Empty Child and (b) raising my eyebrows at the poor observation of blackout drill† to be really upset. But the scene at the station where all the children are being sent off by their mothers really got me.

I normally dislike bits added in out of whole cloth by filmakers, but they did an excellent job there (mind, I wasn't mad about some of the later additions, like the chase over the melting river...)

I'm ashamed to say I have never read the Dark is Rising sequence. I must remedy that at some point (possibly later this summer, when I'm back in Oxford and everyone else is out of town).

† I mean, they hadn't even blacked the house out, for heaven's sake.

[aervir.livejournal.com]

I'm ashamed to say I have never read the Dark is Rising sequence. I must remedy that at some point (possibly later this summer, when I'm back in Oxford and everyone else is out of town).

I'm shocked! SHOCKED, I say!

You must really put them onto your summer reading list as they are classics of YA fantasy.
Even though The Dark Is Rising (the second book, not the series in general) would actually be the ideal book for the Christmas holidays.

And I won't even start to make a list of books or films I used to find rather moving and/or which still affect me emotionally today.

It would be a veritable encyclopaedia with a few quite embarrassing entries (*cough* Titantic *cough*).

[sacred-sarcasm.livejournal.com]

Just to second reading The Dark is Rising sequence - it is brilliant.
I would personally suggest reading Greenwitch (which is, I think, the first in the sequence, but I might be wrong) in the summer, and then The Dark is Rising itself at Christmas.

I find myself welling up at the end of The Last Battle. The bittersweet ending where they meet all their old Narnian friends (but no Susan) and the very last bit about beginning the first chapter of the book, etc.
Still on Narnia, a couple of scenes from the Silver Chair also reduce me to tears - when they are all before the witch/Green Lady and Puddleglum gives his speech about living as a Narnian even if there is no Narnia; and near the end when they escape from the sunless lands into Narnia and it's winter and some animals are holding a bonfire/feast/dance.

The end of Finding Neverland makes me cry too (historical accuracy issues of the film in general put aside) and I'm sure there are other things I've forgotten. Oh, when Ged leaves Tenar in The Tombs of Atuan as well.

[aervir.livejournal.com]

[tree_and_leaf]

I see I shall have to read them. And yes, Puddleglum's speech is an extremely moving moment.

[zoepaleologa.livejournal.com]

Emotional mush is produced by the following (in no particular order except that the first one is the biggie:

1. Hurin Thalion's last stand at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (The Battle of Unnumbered Tears, for non-Elvish buffs) in the Silmarillion. The death of the High King of the Elves, Fingon at the same battle is pretty heartrending, too.

2. Luthien singing of the fate of men and elves before Mandos after her first death in the Silmarillion.

3. The movie "Shadowlands". The first time I watched it, I was raw.

4. I bawled like a baby when Caesar died in the "Rome" series. Because he pulled his toga over his face with his last strength so that no one would witness his moment of death.

5. The last voyage of Ullyses in the Inferno. One of the most beautiful pieces of poetry ever written. They read it at the Italian winter Olympics - perfect.

I'm a soppy wuss.

[eagles-rock.livejournal.com]

Shadowlands! I only had one tissue and was alone in a cinema in California; the tissue had to dry out between crying bouts.

I also cried at 'Remains of the Day' but was strangely unmoved when a reprint was shown at the cinema about a year ago, so won't be trying Shadowlands again, just in case.

[tree_and_leaf]

I also cried at 'Remains of the Day' but was strangely unmoved when a reprint was shown at the cinema about a year ago, so won't be trying Shadowlands again, just in case.

Well, things do tend to hit you harder the first time round (though not always, as the time I sobbed over Effi was something like the third read-through).

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, these are all definitely lump-in-the-throat producing - though I can't speak to 4, as I missed Rome due to the lack of a TV. It often is small details like that that make things unbearably sad, though.

I find Tennyson's Ulysses pretty moving, too.

[eagles-rock.livejournal.com]

'Watership Down'. "Talking rabbits" snorted my mother; there'd been no Beatrix Potter in my youth, nor even Paddington, but I was ten by then, the choice was mine and I had been moved to howling by my first, and possibly only, talking-animal book.

Len Deighton 'Goodbye Mickey Mouse'. World War II bomber epic. I was a teenager. No idea if it's really any good or not.

Albert Camus 'The First Man', semi-autobiography. Unbelievably moving. Not a false note in it.

Random acts of kindness and the pains of poverty-enforced emigration generally get to me. I can't remember if I cried at 'Christ Stopped at Eboli' but I know I was badly shaken for days. But then 'Danny Boy' sung a particular way can stop me in my tracks, so I'm a sucker for that.

I actively avoid certain periods of history so that I don't cry at a badly written book, and don't put myself through a well-written book.

[tree_and_leaf]

Watership Down is magnificent. Have you read The Plague Dogs? It's also excellent, and has splendid illustrations by Wainwright.

Random acts of kindness and the pains of poverty-enforced emigration generally get to me.

There's a line in a song called, I think, the Highland Exile's Lament which always breaks my heart, although the rest of the poem is so-so:

From the lonely shieling and the misty island
Mountains divide us and the waste of seas
But still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.

And then there's the Border Ballad about the knight betrayed by his love:

'Mony's the ane for him maks mane
But none sall ken where he is gane
Ower his white bones, when they be bare
The wind sall blow for ever mair.'

'She moved through the fair' also always shakes me, though that's as much terror as pathos.

Paddington, incidentally, is really partly an allegory about refugees.

[eagles-rock.livejournal.com]

'no two were e'er wed but one had a sorrow that never was said' was almost my subtitle line on LJ, but I thought it too gloomy and frankly misleading, so I went for William Barnes and the misery of familiar places without the familiar people.

Paddington as a refugee; that would have been fine, as long as he wasn't a bear. Darkness Powder Evangelist!

I realise I have read two other talking-animal books - Animal Farm (feels absurd to put that in this category) and Winnie the Pooh (to whom being a bear is quite irrelevant, and which looks incrasingly like a study of mental illnesses) - none of which, like Watership, have anything to do with the animals at all, but I can't see me reading another. I suddenly feel very old.

[tree_and_leaf]

Well, if you ever find yourself having to read a book to a child, Paddington is very good. I particularly tresaure the moment when he got himself into some fix or other and 'called for help, but in a quiet voice so as not to alarm the family'...

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I hardly ever cry at books, even books with astonishingly sad endings. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is my reaction to first reading Arwen’s death in the LortR appendices, and that involved the double whammy of it’s being the end of the story. I can find books very moving and sobering, but I tend to respond with quietness rather than weeping. I can occasionally be manipulated into blinking stoically at films, but generally at scenes of Enormous Bravery rather than romance or death, e.g. I know I’m being shamefully played upon by Peter Jackson in The Two Towers film as the hopeless defence for Helm’s Deep is prepared, but I still love it – and the bit of Anglo-Saxon verse is just a blow below the belt.

Never have read Anthony Price, but my eye was caught by Effi Briest in the library the other day, so I’ll give that a go.

[tree_and_leaf]

Just as a word of warning, the older translations of Effi Briest are quite poor (one reason why the novel never recieved the attention it deserved over here) - the recent Penguin one by Helen Chambers and Hugh Rorrison ispretty good.

I don't generally cry at books or films either, even if I am very moved. And gosh, yes, the Anglo-Saxon poetry in Two Towers. I'm not a great Peter Jackson fan, but that was just wonderful. Funnily, I think the Rohirrim worked better than anything else, in the films, despite the rather silly 'exorcism'.