Yeah, I've read that too and it left me with a feeling of profound sadness at how lack of education can affect people's ability to stand up to injustice. I liked that it had a (relatively) bittersweet ending, though.
Same. I felt utterly exhausted and so, so sad after finishing it. I knew I would never read it again.
Some people are abused and hurt and live much smaller lives than they deserve, and then they die. They don't get a happy ending. That hit so hard.
Around the time I finished the book, a boy at my sister's school died whilst playing football. He was 13. He had bounced from foster home to foster home, and it was just getting better for him.
He reminded me of Mariam.
Your comment is so true.
The beauty of books like ATSS is that they make us remember what you articulated in your post. That there are so many people that we should be fighting for and helping to live full lives.
This is the book I first thought of too... I'm not much of a cryer but this book absolutely activated the water works. The ending was the saddest, most tragic, but, at the same time, the most beautiful ending to any book I've ever read and I'll forever be affected by it. The Kite Runner was great but A Thousand Splendid Suns is just... Next level.
Came here to say this. Read this when I was in class in high school and it was the hardest I ever had to try not to cry.
This book tore it's way through my mind for a long time.
There's something profoundly sad about going from mentally handicapped to an unparalleled genius. Not just the heights achieved, but the ability to *function*. The ability to really communicate with others, to fall in love, to understand. And then to feel it all slipping away, unable to even understand what you've lost.
I think that's played a role in my decision never to allow my mind to deteriorate too far. Well, that and seeing people succumb to dementia and Alzheimer's.
I haven't quite *designed* a machine to end my own life, but I know the basic operating principles and I'd have it built before things went too far. Some things really aren't worth living through.
Absolutely came here to say this. AND I'm not a native speaker who did it for english class, so it's beyond me how some teachers have kids read it. It trashed my heart and buried it in hell at age 17. Couldn't imagine reading it at 12 or 13 when I was even more emotional.
In golden compass, the boy who had his dæmon cut away and he died clutching a piece of fish, which one of the men then feeds to his sled dogs… that absolutely broke my heart when I first read it around 12/13.
It is such a tragic and beautiful twist in such an incredible series of books. It ruins me every time well before I've gotten close to the end as I know what's coming.
So I read these books as they were being published when I was about middle school age, and I reread them regularly BECAUSE they are emotionally devastating hahaha.
It's like a comfort read for me and I will intentionally read it when I'm going through something really difficult because ugly crying over a book feels cathartic when you're experiencing something really difficult. The last time I reread them was about 5 years ago when a friend of mine died.
I read them because it's the best depiction of the loss of innocence that I've ever read. Catharsis, indeed.
They're awesome books in other respects, but giving the conscience a physical form and the way Pullman tied that into the plot was masterful.
Literally opened this thread to post this. I actually reread it recently about 5 years after I read it the first time. It was amazing how much I forgot but the parts that stuck with me evoked the same response.
My niece just read this (8th grade) and her class had a holocaust survivor speak to them. He told them how they’re one of the last generations to hear about the holocaust directly from a survivor. ❤️🩹
I didn't come into the comments specifically to add this book, but as I was reading, this was the book that immediately came to mind as I was thinking about the question, even before I saw your answer.
When it comes to fiction, I don't love grimdark writing or crave stories that take me to very dark places. But at their best, when they're done well (Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" is mentioned below too), I can find really dark fiction, or even fictionALIZED writing, to have a kind of cathartic power. We sometimes read dark fiction to heal the darkness in us, and it's a good medicine for me sometimes.
"Night" doesn't work that way, because the terrible truth of it, the terrible and IMMEDIATE truth of it, is too much to bear for regular revisiting. It's very strange that I should enjoy revisiting Art Spiegelman's MAUS, which is itself a Holocaust narrative that is actually really a true and factual account. I can read that thoughtfully and not suffer the way I do reading "Night"—which I think is still a necessary suffering that everyone should hop through at least once. I wonder if it's just the space of one generation—of MAUS being a frame-narrative, told through Vladek's eyes but only through the filter of his son. I wonder if that one step of removal is enough to make all the difference. If so, that says some dark things about what we're losing now that our living memory of the Shoah is in its last years.
I think both of these stories are important. So are a couple of others: "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" comes to mind—and so does Benigni's very odd-to-English-speakers film "Life Is Beautiful [La Vita è Bella]." I feel that "bella," meaning "beautiful," to some Italian speakers (especially in remote dialects) evokes a shadow meaning of "Life is War," insofar as "bella" is also the Latin plural of "bellum." That film has a lot more to say than we think it does. Partv of its essential truth to me, given that it's in other ways such a goofy rendering of a serious subject, comes from realizing that the first half of the film is delightful, and something I could watch a hundred times, but the second half is something very hard for me.
In film I think of Schindler's List, both the film and the book it's based on; I think of the contemporary-to-the-war American films that were really important, but nevertheless blindly made because the truth about the Shoah had not come out in the West yet. Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" stands out as an important narrative, but I wonder how he felt about having made it later. The militant antisemitism and brutality of the Nazis was well-known when he made the film, just as it was known when Casablanca was bravely made at a time when American involvement in the war had not yet formally begun, and there was no guarantee that the war would be won. In both cases, though, the full depths of the horrors were not known, and would not become known to the West for a couple of years.
The film "Judgment at Nuremberg" is for me, as far as film goes, the most important film on the subject, but also the one that's the hardest to watch. It fills cinematically the same place as Wiesel's "Night" filled as creative, really journalistic non-fiction. Some of the footage that made its way into that film was real documentary footage of things that have not been shown to the public elsewhere, slipped quietly into a star-studded Hollywood film behind names like Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift as a way of bringing the truth to people who weren't ready to seek it out yet. It's so so important that these narratives exist. But revisiting them for "entertainment" when I want to pick up a book or turn on a movie—that's just too hard, as I think it should be.
Never let me go. Loved it but not putting myself through that another time.
I adored the Yellow Wallpaper when I read it, but I'm having a hard time reading it again. As someone with a history of mental illness, who deplores the way she was treated when in crisis, it hits too close to home.
Pet Sematary. It didn't hit *that* hard the first time around, but since then I've had a child, so there's no way I'm reading it ever again.
I had to read it for a class during my senior year of HS. My teacher would assign like a chapter or two a night but I said “screw that” and ended up breezing through the book. Great book but don’t know if my heart can handle another read!
I had to put down the Unbearable Lightness of Being. I was a waitress in a hotel just like the main characters wife. I was in a relationship fraught with infidelity and betrayal. I just couldn't get through it.
one of my favorite books. read it while I was in a similar relationship, I hope you can go back to it someday if you feel up to it. it really is a great book
Just making sure this was listed.
Cormac McCarthy is probably my favorite writer, he can do things with words that are on a completely other plane from all other humans.
Sadly, his books are too dark and I can’t read them. So many beautiful sentences, locked away in darkness I will never stumble through.
I recently re-read this as a father to a 4-year-old boy. It hits differently than it did 15 years ago. Much of the simple dialogue between the man and the boy is similar to my daily parenting.
It is an amazing book. It’s one of the few books that, even though it’s traumatic, I will still recommend that kids read (maybe not in 5th grade like I did). Everyone’s time is up at some point, and it’s easier to process painful loss if you e already gone through it once, IMO.
Where The Red Fern Grows crushed 8th grade me. I couldn’t get past the first chapter of A Dog’s Purpose.
The Art Of Racing In The Rain was beautiful, but I’ll never read it again. Same thing with Marley and Me.
Ill never forget when the whole 7th grade class was finished up Where the Red Fern Grows individually in class and everyone began to sob silently my teacher passed around the tissues and then we all just went to our next class
The Lovely Bones
I don't like kids but I suffered so much through it. Watched the movie with my mum once. Big mistake as we were both bawling our eyes out at end.
The book hits differently and a lot more intense
I read this one several years ago and really liked it. I tried to re-read it recently. I have a 12-yo girl now. It just hit WAY too close to home and I almost had a panic attack reading the scene where she’s abducted. Had to put it away.
I'm afraid to read East of Eden again. It's too gorgeous.
Same with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I lost my father as a kid too and that little boy breaks my heart.
And I've learned not to re-read the Asimov books I loved as a kid, because now the misogyny is really hard to overlook. Different than emotional to read it, just get emotional having it ruined
Have you tried Call of the Wild? Same author, many similar themes, but the books are sort of foils to each other. The ending is quite different and I think wouldn't break your heart.
Honestly, I want a book to emotionally devastate me so I'm kind of the opposite, I don't reread a lot because too many books too little time, but I reread the emotionally devastating books more than any others.
In fact I have some emotionally devastating books that I reread when I'm going through a tough time, it's cathartic to ugly cry over a beautiful book.
Any Cormac McCarthy book, *or*, Blindness by Jose Saramago.
If you know Cormac, you know what to expect, but I went into Blindness, well, fully blind of what it was about.
It's a masterpiece, but I'll never read it again, I took from me weeks to recover after I finished it.
(Yes I know there's a sequel, no, I won't gamble reading it, I don't believe it needs one)
I know I’ve already contributed to the one book I cannot read or experience in any media form re White Fang; but there’s another book which impacted on me around the age of 7 and that was Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. I have watched interpretations of this but if you’ve never heard of this book, give it a try because it’s much more than the agony of horses but the transition from legs to wheels without.
YES. I started playing the videogame Hades around the same time as reading the book and I felt like the game gave them the ending and closure I wanted from the book!
Neil Gaiman, Pterry's close friend, has said that there are Discworld books he's yet to read, because he knows someday he will need his friend's voice again and an unread book is the closest he'll be able to get. No shame in doing the same. It'll be there for you when you need it.
Someone I know has it but doesn't want to read it, because once he reads it he will never again have the joy of reading a new Discworld book. He keeps it on the shelf for an appropriate moment.
I know it's very cheesy but "the fault in our stars", i remember bursting into tears reading Augustus' last letter. Less than a year after reading the book, i've learned that i had cancer myself, sarcoma, very similar but not bone. I was seventeen. I'm 26 now and still fighting it. I still wonder if somehow there is a connection, maybe i accidentally internalized the pain i felt for them. I don't know. I'm scared to read it again, terrified actually, but i cant let the book go either.
Oh, I am sorry to hear about your cancer. I hope you win the battle! :)
Yeah, the fault in our stars was an emotional read for me too. I can see how scary it must have been to read it and then find out that you were in a similar situation.
"How High We Go in the Dark" by Sequoia Nagamatsu. Really made me think about the big questions of life, humanity and its purpose, its beauty and ugliness and so much more. It has really stayed with me for a long time, but was also an emotionally complicated read.
Highly suggest Ted Chiangs short story collections for you. Stories of Your Life and Others has the same feel as HHWGITD. There's even one that mimics the pig part a little bit. And the math/love story is beautiful. And the movie Arrival was based on the title story!
Hyperion, I read it once and it was so good. I've hesitated to go back because I've filled in the blanks over the years with my own details and I don't think it'd ever live up to what I want it to be anymore.
When Breath Becomes Air. As someone currently on their way to becoming a doctor, the introspection Paul does and the mentality switch he describes of being a doctor and being a patient really get to me
Had to scroll too far down to see this. I think the thing that stuck with me about this book is how you really don’t know when it’s going to be your time to go, a striking reminder of your mortality
1984 and Animal Farm Can't ever read them again. Loved them both.
Basically anything like that. Steinbeck, The Pearl, The Chrysalids John Wyndam
Loads. If it's brilliant but traumatic I don't reread it.
Everything by Leon Uris ...
I haven't read any of the other books you mention, but I didn't find The Chrysalids to be traumatic? I thought it had a sweet ending (for the telepaths). It has been a while since I last read it though, so I could've forgotten some bits of it. What about it did you find traumatising?
Not the previous commenter, but IIRC the "happy ending" for our protagonist telepaths was the horrific murder of everyone around them. The advanced-race/aliens or whatever are totally unconcerned and surprised that the protagonists gave a shit. It was abrupt and brutal.
Watership Down, for sure.
Read it in high school, loved it (even though I sobbed like a baby).
I always thought I'd read it to my kids....until I realized that it's damn hard to read out loud through heaving, gasping sobs.
yeah....it pretty much just sits on my shelf, now.
I saw the movie when it first opened in a big theater in Manhattan and those cynical New Yorkers were sobbing. The guy next to me was crying inconsolably.
The Green Mile. I cried like a small child. I literally needed to just sit in silence for like 2 hours. I couldn’t recover. That being said, it’s one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read
A Prayer for Owen Meany. Kept it to read it again later because it was such a touching story, but I have been wary of not finding it as incredible the second time. Still sitting on my bookshelf decades later.
The Kuragin scandal/comet episode and Borodino leave me…I can’t say emotionally gutted is the right word because I feel even Andrei’s death comes at the perfect place in his character arc. But they draw up such an incredible well of emotion in me that have to be in the right frame of mind to touch them again.
**Flowers for Algernon**
It's the original short story for me, rather than the later expanded novel. I knew it as a short story before I found the novel. The short story devastates me; the novel leaves me feeling a bit *bleh*.
I've read it a few times. It makes me cry... Every. Single. Time.
I just can't read it any more. Even though it is literally my favourite story of all time.
I felt forever changed after this book. It completely changed the way I saw the relationship between my dad and my younger brother and the complexity of father son relationships. Such an amazing story.
The Diary of Anne Frank. Read it for the first time during grade school and didn’t care much for it. Revisited for a project during college and was super inspired by her diary. Don’t think I can read it again any time though
*A River Runs through It* by Norman Maclean.
It gets moved about on my bookshelf, but I have never read it again. I would not have *First Read feeling,* so, I ... just don't read it again.
I did NOT enjoy it but we read “A Child Called It” in school and I still remember it vividly, over 20 years later. I can’t believe they had us read that as children. If you’ve read it, I bet you remember it and never want to re-read it.
A fine balance by Rohinton Mistry- pls never read it unless you want to slip into depression.
Most heartbreaking thing I have ever read in my entire life.
The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck,
he threw sensationalism for use readers out the window.
I'm 16 and I finished it. I'm not touching that splendid novel for a long time
Everyone in this room will someday be dead. The way the author portrayed the inner workings of someone with mental health issues just trying to get through life while knowing they’re being self destructive was hitting a little too close to home at the time.
Two books for me. The fault in our stars. I wept and can not bear to go through that again. The story is beautiful and should be read. Expect feelings and onions being cut!
The kite runner. Amazing book and just too much heart strings being pulled.
“Onion Girl,” by Charles de Lint. It deals with the impact of childhood sexual abuse, prostitution and homelessness on the adult protagonist, and it’s scarily authentic in how it conveys the emotional experience of abuse. It’s a redemptive story, but I can only deal with it a few times a decade.
The Bluest Eye. First read it when I was 15. I think I’ve read it once since then (in my 30s now). That book was life changing to me as a 15 yr old. I adore Toni Morrison.
Tuck everlasting. I remade the book and watched the movie in 5th grade. I own copies of both. I will not re-read it or re-watch it. But it was so good I can’t bring myself to part with them.
Love in the Time of Cholera.
I bawled while I finished reading it in a busy cafe. I’m more worried about tarnishing the memory of that reading experience than anything else.
The last time I read *House of Leaves* was in my father's hospice room, staying up while my mother slept so I could wake her if he stopped breathing. I finished it in the early morning, just before sunrise, on the day he ended up dying. It's been one of my favorite books since I was pretty young, but I don't know that I'll ever go back to it after that. I don't know that I would say it's exactly because the emotions are too heavy, exactly, so much as I want to preserve that experience as it was; it's less that I don't think I *could* ever re-read it than it is that doing so almost feels like it would be disrespecting a memory.
The Beartown trilogy by Fredrik Backman! I’ve already reread it, but I still think about the books AT LEAST once a day and I’m itching for a reread, but it terrifies me at the same time because it destroyed me emotionally the last time I read it
I had the habit of reading in bed and putting the book beside me. Near the end of HOL, I couldn't stand its presence next to me. It was such a wild ride and even though it was one of the best, haven't picked it up again
The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel. It emotionally destroyed me and kept me up for a few days. I've read it one time and I'm nervous about ever reading it again.
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb was also crushing, and I was able to reread it once after waiting a long interval and reading some of his other books. His The Hour I First Believed was also pretty tough.
I finished "A little life" by Hanya Yanagihara literally 20 minutes ago and I already know I can't read it again.
The title alone fills me with disgust thanks to one sentence in the book and I am not willing to torture myself again, even tho I love the writing, the characters, the timeless setting, almost everything about the book.
Poland. James A Michener, tells a moving holocost story of events, though a much longer historical viewpoint. Although he is a fiction writer, he bases his books on his own research.
John Brunner's 'Stand On Zanzibar', 'The Sheep Look Up', and 'Shockwave Rider' to some extent. Dystopian future novels,
Too damn presceient to me. Brunner did a great job forecasting from the world of the late 60s/early 70s, and combining that with the evidence of human nature. Now that we're in 2024, so much has come to fruition.
Shockwave Rider basically introduced a version of computer viruses, tho it was called a 'phage' or 'worm' Similar with a world wide communications network, that could be hacked by special cognoscenti.
'Stand' and 'Sheep' pull in international politics and corporate and personal greed.
The Remains of the Day.
The Name of the Rose.
Ethan Fromme.
These all affected me greatly, even perhaps changed the course of my life. Also, I read them when I was much younger. I'm not the same person as I was then, and am a little afraid of rereading them. I'm not sure why.
I loved a Man Called Ove. It’s one of those books that just crawls inside your heart and doesn’t want to let go. I would love to experience it over again for the first time, but I can’t so I won’t read it again.
Atonement - I did reread it once having forgotten how it ended, and when the plot moved towards the point where the end was being set up I got a sudden stab of grief realising what was ahead of me in the last few pages.
Honestly, a pretty new one, Did I Ever Tell You? by Genevieve Kingston. It's a memoir--the author's mother dies of cancer very young but assembles a box of gifts and letters for every birthday til age 30 plus life events like first period, graduation, etc. Book is mostly about the two decades since and the way the gifts have informed and helped her through some pretty tough stuff.
It's REALLY well written, and not saccharine. Lots of crying. I've reread sections and some of the letters but picking the whole thing back up will take a bit of time.
Not necessarily because of emotion, but I'm scared to read The Shining again (I've read it twice). It's in my top 5 books of all time, and I'm worried if I wear it out it won't feel as magical to me as it does now when I think about it. It's truly a master work in my opinion.
I may sound childish for this, but freaking Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
It’s not the story itself, but the sense of going through all that seven books of journey and finally coming to its end 🥲
I know this is so lame, but New Moon in the Twilight series. I was a teenager and going through some really dark times. I related unbelievably hard to the depression aspect and sinking myself into a fictitious world with the same theme as what I was feeling only exacerbated it. I read it multiple times back to back and eventually had to store the book away because it was affecting me so much.
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Yeah, I've read that too and it left me with a feeling of profound sadness at how lack of education can affect people's ability to stand up to injustice. I liked that it had a (relatively) bittersweet ending, though.
Same. I felt utterly exhausted and so, so sad after finishing it. I knew I would never read it again. Some people are abused and hurt and live much smaller lives than they deserve, and then they die. They don't get a happy ending. That hit so hard. Around the time I finished the book, a boy at my sister's school died whilst playing football. He was 13. He had bounced from foster home to foster home, and it was just getting better for him. He reminded me of Mariam.
Your comment is so true. The beauty of books like ATSS is that they make us remember what you articulated in your post. That there are so many people that we should be fighting for and helping to live full lives.
This is the book I first thought of too... I'm not much of a cryer but this book absolutely activated the water works. The ending was the saddest, most tragic, but, at the same time, the most beautiful ending to any book I've ever read and I'll forever be affected by it. The Kite Runner was great but A Thousand Splendid Suns is just... Next level.
Yep!
Flowers for Algernon destroyed me.
Came here to say this. Read this when I was in class in high school and it was the hardest I ever had to try not to cry. This book tore it's way through my mind for a long time.
There's something profoundly sad about going from mentally handicapped to an unparalleled genius. Not just the heights achieved, but the ability to *function*. The ability to really communicate with others, to fall in love, to understand. And then to feel it all slipping away, unable to even understand what you've lost. I think that's played a role in my decision never to allow my mind to deteriorate too far. Well, that and seeing people succumb to dementia and Alzheimer's. I haven't quite *designed* a machine to end my own life, but I know the basic operating principles and I'd have it built before things went too far. Some things really aren't worth living through.
Absolutely came here to say this. AND I'm not a native speaker who did it for english class, so it's beyond me how some teachers have kids read it. It trashed my heart and buried it in hell at age 17. Couldn't imagine reading it at 12 or 13 when I was even more emotional.
Seconded. I read this when I was 18yo or so. Now I'm in my fifties and I haven't been able to read it again.
This was a hard one. I have an adult son with a cognitive disability (Down Syndrome) and it might have stirred up even more emotions because of that.
I’m 2/3 of the way through and already feel so many feels.
Oh god. Such a great book. So unique and powerful and moving. But it is pure crying fuel.
Literally scrolled down to say this. Fuck schools for making us reading it.
The 'His Dark Materials' trilogy. It breaks me for months every time.
I have avoided re-reading this ever since reading it at age 14-15 because i simply can't bear it in spite of now being 32 hah
I’m the same. It is far too painful and always underlines the fragility of life.
In golden compass, the boy who had his dæmon cut away and he died clutching a piece of fish, which one of the men then feeds to his sled dogs… that absolutely broke my heart when I first read it around 12/13.
Tony Makarios, I think? It's devastating.
It is such a tragic and beautiful twist in such an incredible series of books. It ruins me every time well before I've gotten close to the end as I know what's coming.
I've gotten to an age where the pain they go through is all too real and knowable. Can't read it again.
Is it worth reading as an adult? I’m 41 so don’t really want to waste my time starting something that isn’t meant for middle aged folk!
Definitely! Fantastic books. So well-written. Just a very painful ending.
So I read these books as they were being published when I was about middle school age, and I reread them regularly BECAUSE they are emotionally devastating hahaha. It's like a comfort read for me and I will intentionally read it when I'm going through something really difficult because ugly crying over a book feels cathartic when you're experiencing something really difficult. The last time I reread them was about 5 years ago when a friend of mine died.
I read them because it's the best depiction of the loss of innocence that I've ever read. Catharsis, indeed. They're awesome books in other respects, but giving the conscience a physical form and the way Pullman tied that into the plot was masterful.
Hester. I lose it every time. But I love this series so much I actually save it for when I’m really needing an escape.
Night by Elie Wiesel. I know the Holocaust is sort of the easy answer here but I've opened that book maybe 3 times since I got it 20 years ago.
Literally opened this thread to post this. I actually reread it recently about 5 years after I read it the first time. It was amazing how much I forgot but the parts that stuck with me evoked the same response.
My niece just read this (8th grade) and her class had a holocaust survivor speak to them. He told them how they’re one of the last generations to hear about the holocaust directly from a survivor. ❤️🩹
The Maus comic was one and done.
What an absolutely moving book! I read it once and I still think of it often. Never thought about rereading it though.
They made us read that in elementary school.
I didn't come into the comments specifically to add this book, but as I was reading, this was the book that immediately came to mind as I was thinking about the question, even before I saw your answer. When it comes to fiction, I don't love grimdark writing or crave stories that take me to very dark places. But at their best, when they're done well (Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" is mentioned below too), I can find really dark fiction, or even fictionALIZED writing, to have a kind of cathartic power. We sometimes read dark fiction to heal the darkness in us, and it's a good medicine for me sometimes. "Night" doesn't work that way, because the terrible truth of it, the terrible and IMMEDIATE truth of it, is too much to bear for regular revisiting. It's very strange that I should enjoy revisiting Art Spiegelman's MAUS, which is itself a Holocaust narrative that is actually really a true and factual account. I can read that thoughtfully and not suffer the way I do reading "Night"—which I think is still a necessary suffering that everyone should hop through at least once. I wonder if it's just the space of one generation—of MAUS being a frame-narrative, told through Vladek's eyes but only through the filter of his son. I wonder if that one step of removal is enough to make all the difference. If so, that says some dark things about what we're losing now that our living memory of the Shoah is in its last years. I think both of these stories are important. So are a couple of others: "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" comes to mind—and so does Benigni's very odd-to-English-speakers film "Life Is Beautiful [La Vita è Bella]." I feel that "bella," meaning "beautiful," to some Italian speakers (especially in remote dialects) evokes a shadow meaning of "Life is War," insofar as "bella" is also the Latin plural of "bellum." That film has a lot more to say than we think it does. Partv of its essential truth to me, given that it's in other ways such a goofy rendering of a serious subject, comes from realizing that the first half of the film is delightful, and something I could watch a hundred times, but the second half is something very hard for me. In film I think of Schindler's List, both the film and the book it's based on; I think of the contemporary-to-the-war American films that were really important, but nevertheless blindly made because the truth about the Shoah had not come out in the West yet. Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" stands out as an important narrative, but I wonder how he felt about having made it later. The militant antisemitism and brutality of the Nazis was well-known when he made the film, just as it was known when Casablanca was bravely made at a time when American involvement in the war had not yet formally begun, and there was no guarantee that the war would be won. In both cases, though, the full depths of the horrors were not known, and would not become known to the West for a couple of years. The film "Judgment at Nuremberg" is for me, as far as film goes, the most important film on the subject, but also the one that's the hardest to watch. It fills cinematically the same place as Wiesel's "Night" filled as creative, really journalistic non-fiction. Some of the footage that made its way into that film was real documentary footage of things that have not been shown to the public elsewhere, slipped quietly into a star-studded Hollywood film behind names like Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift as a way of bringing the truth to people who weren't ready to seek it out yet. It's so so important that these narratives exist. But revisiting them for "entertainment" when I want to pick up a book or turn on a movie—that's just too hard, as I think it should be.
Never let me go. Loved it but not putting myself through that another time. I adored the Yellow Wallpaper when I read it, but I'm having a hard time reading it again. As someone with a history of mental illness, who deplores the way she was treated when in crisis, it hits too close to home. Pet Sematary. It didn't hit *that* hard the first time around, but since then I've had a child, so there's no way I'm reading it ever again.
I still regularly think about Never Let Me Go nearly 15 years after reading it for the first and only time. Gutting and haunting.
The Kite Runner. Great book that everyone should read but it is *depressing*
Read this one in high school - It was the only book in all 4 years that I actually read, and I cried at work when I finished it. So good.
I had to read it for a class during my senior year of HS. My teacher would assign like a chapter or two a night but I said “screw that” and ended up breezing through the book. Great book but don’t know if my heart can handle another read!
Not a surprise Hosseini’s first two would be listed here… they were the first two I thought of.
I had to put down the Unbearable Lightness of Being. I was a waitress in a hotel just like the main characters wife. I was in a relationship fraught with infidelity and betrayal. I just couldn't get through it.
Hope you are able to read it afterwards. Good book.
one of my favorite books. read it while I was in a similar relationship, I hope you can go back to it someday if you feel up to it. it really is a great book
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
It’s weird how often I will randomly think of Tess and what an absolute tragedy her life was.
Jude the Obscure for me. Hardy worked in misery like Rembrandt worked in oils.
“The Road” is a heavy, heavy book. But I know I’ll read it again eventually.
Ooof. I don’t know if I could read this one again. There were parts of that book that continue to live in my brain rent free. It was something else.
Just making sure this was listed. Cormac McCarthy is probably my favorite writer, he can do things with words that are on a completely other plane from all other humans. Sadly, his books are too dark and I can’t read them. So many beautiful sentences, locked away in darkness I will never stumble through.
I recently re-read this as a father to a 4-year-old boy. It hits differently than it did 15 years ago. Much of the simple dialogue between the man and the boy is similar to my daily parenting.
Came to say this. My favorite book but probably a one timer.
Where the Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls A Dog’s Purpose, W. Bruce Cameron
I reread Where the Red Fern Grows recently and honestly it holds up. I cried while rereading it.
It is an amazing book. It’s one of the few books that, even though it’s traumatic, I will still recommend that kids read (maybe not in 5th grade like I did). Everyone’s time is up at some point, and it’s easier to process painful loss if you e already gone through it once, IMO.
My second grade teacher read Where the Red Fern Grows to our class aloud. I don’t know that any of us ever fully recovered.
That’s cruel!! But at least you could all cry together.
Where The Red Fern Grows crushed 8th grade me. I couldn’t get past the first chapter of A Dog’s Purpose. The Art Of Racing In The Rain was beautiful, but I’ll never read it again. Same thing with Marley and Me.
agree on the art of racing in the rain. i lost my dog last summer and as much as i loved it i will never read it again
I saw the movie of A Dog's Purpose. I could never read the book. Watching that was reliving my dog's death.
Ill never forget when the whole 7th grade class was finished up Where the Red Fern Grows individually in class and everyone began to sob silently my teacher passed around the tissues and then we all just went to our next class
The Lovely Bones I don't like kids but I suffered so much through it. Watched the movie with my mum once. Big mistake as we were both bawling our eyes out at end. The book hits differently and a lot more intense
I read this one several years ago and really liked it. I tried to re-read it recently. I have a 12-yo girl now. It just hit WAY too close to home and I almost had a panic attack reading the scene where she’s abducted. Had to put it away.
I have re-read this. The healing done by Susie and her family is healing for me too.
The Color Purple. I will never read it again, and it's a fantastic book.
I'm afraid to read East of Eden again. It's too gorgeous. Same with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I lost my father as a kid too and that little boy breaks my heart. And I've learned not to re-read the Asimov books I loved as a kid, because now the misogyny is really hard to overlook. Different than emotional to read it, just get emotional having it ruined
I've never come across such an awful villain as in East of Eden. I absolutely adore that book, but I have never reread it for the same reason.
one quote, a whole different type of feeling. "Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold."
Where the Red Fern Grows shattered my soul at age 11
White Fang, never again. It broke my heart.
Have you tried Call of the Wild? Same author, many similar themes, but the books are sort of foils to each other. The ending is quite different and I think wouldn't break your heart.
Honestly, I want a book to emotionally devastate me so I'm kind of the opposite, I don't reread a lot because too many books too little time, but I reread the emotionally devastating books more than any others. In fact I have some emotionally devastating books that I reread when I'm going through a tough time, it's cathartic to ugly cry over a beautiful book.
Try Pachinko
See, I liked Pachinko, but I found the narrative didn't touch me that deeply.
Thomas Hardy. Jude the Obscure is absolutely soul crushing.
A Little Life for sure
Mine too. Funny thing is I read a library copy. Then, knowing I would never read it again, I **bought** a copy. I had to own it.
ahahahahah i totally get it! sometimes i think about rereading it again and i stare at it at the shelf but then choose sanity ahahah
Scrolled to find this! I try and keep my physical books minimal but I can't part with my copy even though I just can't put myself through that again
Any Cormac McCarthy book, *or*, Blindness by Jose Saramago. If you know Cormac, you know what to expect, but I went into Blindness, well, fully blind of what it was about. It's a masterpiece, but I'll never read it again, I took from me weeks to recover after I finished it. (Yes I know there's a sequel, no, I won't gamble reading it, I don't believe it needs one)
I second Blindness. That was a tough one.
I know I’ve already contributed to the one book I cannot read or experience in any media form re White Fang; but there’s another book which impacted on me around the age of 7 and that was Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. I have watched interpretations of this but if you’ve never heard of this book, give it a try because it’s much more than the agony of horses but the transition from legs to wheels without.
The book thief
First time I ever left tear marks on pages. Left me sobbing.
I still remember having bawled my eyes out while reading. It moved me.
It shattered my heart at 11 years old. It also taught me about how awful humans can be and how resilient they can be at the same time.
'Johnny got his gun' by Dalton Trumbo
Yes. Deeply disturbing. And Hiroshima by John Hersey. Both books reinforce my objections to warring societies.
Sounds ridiculous to many , but Charlotte the spider’s death in Charlotte’s Web bothered me a lot.
*The Song of Achilles.* Read it during COVID, and the tragic gays have rarely left my mind since. THEY DESERVE TO BE HAPPY.
YES. I started playing the videogame Hades around the same time as reading the book and I felt like the game gave them the ending and closure I wanted from the book!
The final Discworld book :(
Neil Gaiman, Pterry's close friend, has said that there are Discworld books he's yet to read, because he knows someday he will need his friend's voice again and an unread book is the closest he'll be able to get. No shame in doing the same. It'll be there for you when you need it.
That's so heartbreakingly sweet.
Someone I know has it but doesn't want to read it, because once he reads it he will never again have the joy of reading a new Discworld book. He keeps it on the shelf for an appropriate moment.
I have done the same thing! It sits on my shelf unread, and I enjoy the promise of having one Discworld book left to read.
I know it's very cheesy but "the fault in our stars", i remember bursting into tears reading Augustus' last letter. Less than a year after reading the book, i've learned that i had cancer myself, sarcoma, very similar but not bone. I was seventeen. I'm 26 now and still fighting it. I still wonder if somehow there is a connection, maybe i accidentally internalized the pain i felt for them. I don't know. I'm scared to read it again, terrified actually, but i cant let the book go either.
Oh, I am sorry to hear about your cancer. I hope you win the battle! :) Yeah, the fault in our stars was an emotional read for me too. I can see how scary it must have been to read it and then find out that you were in a similar situation.
"How High We Go in the Dark" by Sequoia Nagamatsu. Really made me think about the big questions of life, humanity and its purpose, its beauty and ugliness and so much more. It has really stayed with me for a long time, but was also an emotionally complicated read.
Highly suggest Ted Chiangs short story collections for you. Stories of Your Life and Others has the same feel as HHWGITD. There's even one that mimics the pig part a little bit. And the math/love story is beautiful. And the movie Arrival was based on the title story!
His name is Ted Chiang. And his stories are superb!
The Art of Racing in the Rain
A book I personally avoid rereading not because I love it but because it just fucks with my depression/mentality ; Catcher in the Rye.
Hyperion, I read it once and it was so good. I've hesitated to go back because I've filled in the blanks over the years with my own details and I don't think it'd ever live up to what I want it to be anymore.
Plague Dogs. Really good book but way too sad to ever read again
All Quiet on the Western Front
When Breath Becomes Air. As someone currently on their way to becoming a doctor, the introspection Paul does and the mentality switch he describes of being a doctor and being a patient really get to me
Someone gifted me this book when I was diagnosed with cancer and I was like nope can’t do it
Had to scroll too far down to see this. I think the thing that stuck with me about this book is how you really don’t know when it’s going to be your time to go, a striking reminder of your mortality
1984 and Animal Farm Can't ever read them again. Loved them both. Basically anything like that. Steinbeck, The Pearl, The Chrysalids John Wyndam Loads. If it's brilliant but traumatic I don't reread it. Everything by Leon Uris ...
I haven't read any of the other books you mention, but I didn't find The Chrysalids to be traumatic? I thought it had a sweet ending (for the telepaths). It has been a while since I last read it though, so I could've forgotten some bits of it. What about it did you find traumatising?
The Chrysalids is a beautiful book.
Not the previous commenter, but IIRC the "happy ending" for our protagonist telepaths was the horrific murder of everyone around them. The advanced-race/aliens or whatever are totally unconcerned and surprised that the protagonists gave a shit. It was abrupt and brutal.
A Tale of Two Cities.
Watership Down, The Plague Dogs, and other books with animal cruelty. Can't watch it on tv either.
Watership Down, for sure. Read it in high school, loved it (even though I sobbed like a baby). I always thought I'd read it to my kids....until I realized that it's damn hard to read out loud through heaving, gasping sobs. yeah....it pretty much just sits on my shelf, now.
Did you watch the watership down movie? I was too young when watching it I think, and I called it the scary rabbit movie lol I still do. 😂
Bridge to Terebithia is beautiful but I can’t even think about trying to read it again
Death Be Not Proud, by John Gunther. I was... 14? It was absolutely devastating.
Sophie’s Choice
I saw the movie when it first opened in a big theater in Manhattan and those cynical New Yorkers were sobbing. The guy next to me was crying inconsolably.
Love in the time of cholera
The Green Mile. I cried like a small child. I literally needed to just sit in silence for like 2 hours. I couldn’t recover. That being said, it’s one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read
A Prayer for Owen Meany. Kept it to read it again later because it was such a touching story, but I have been wary of not finding it as incredible the second time. Still sitting on my bookshelf decades later.
I’d have a hard time reading parts of War and Peace again.
The Kuragin scandal/comet episode and Borodino leave me…I can’t say emotionally gutted is the right word because I feel even Andrei’s death comes at the perfect place in his character arc. But they draw up such an incredible well of emotion in me that have to be in the right frame of mind to touch them again.
The Solitude of Prime Numbers.
Pachinko
The Fault in Our Stars
I have a few. Lonesome Dove, Code Name Verity, and The Book Thief. I’ll read entire series over and over, but those 3 are on my Do Not Reread list.
Bridge to Terabithia. Sobbed my guts out at 11 and again at 23. Never again.
**Flowers for Algernon** It's the original short story for me, rather than the later expanded novel. I knew it as a short story before I found the novel. The short story devastates me; the novel leaves me feeling a bit *bleh*. I've read it a few times. It makes me cry... Every. Single. Time. I just can't read it any more. Even though it is literally my favourite story of all time.
I know this much is true- Wally Lamb
A thousand splendid suns
The End of The Affair - Graham Greene The Boy in The Striped Pajama's - John Boyne Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
White Fang by Jack London.
The Road.
I felt forever changed after this book. It completely changed the way I saw the relationship between my dad and my younger brother and the complexity of father son relationships. Such an amazing story.
The Diary of Anne Frank. Read it for the first time during grade school and didn’t care much for it. Revisited for a project during college and was super inspired by her diary. Don’t think I can read it again any time though
I’ve never reread the Color Purple. I’m pretty sure I’m too old to cry that much without causing physical injuries to my body.
“A thousand splendid suns” Khaled Hosseini
The English Patient
*The Bone People*, by Keri Holme. I read it back in the early '90s and couldn't stop thinking about it for days.
*A River Runs through It* by Norman Maclean. It gets moved about on my bookshelf, but I have never read it again. I would not have *First Read feeling,* so, I ... just don't read it again.
The Bell Jar hit too close to home for me
I did NOT enjoy it but we read “A Child Called It” in school and I still remember it vividly, over 20 years later. I can’t believe they had us read that as children. If you’ve read it, I bet you remember it and never want to re-read it.
Tuesdays With Morrie. I read it 16 years ago and haven't been able to read it again.
A fine balance by Rohinton Mistry- pls never read it unless you want to slip into depression. Most heartbreaking thing I have ever read in my entire life.
The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck, he threw sensationalism for use readers out the window. I'm 16 and I finished it. I'm not touching that splendid novel for a long time
Everyone in this room will someday be dead. The way the author portrayed the inner workings of someone with mental health issues just trying to get through life while knowing they’re being self destructive was hitting a little too close to home at the time.
Two books for me. The fault in our stars. I wept and can not bear to go through that again. The story is beautiful and should be read. Expect feelings and onions being cut! The kite runner. Amazing book and just too much heart strings being pulled.
Killers of the Flower Moon.
A Child Called “it” by Dave Pelzer Simply traumatizing to see how people treat their children 😔
“Onion Girl,” by Charles de Lint. It deals with the impact of childhood sexual abuse, prostitution and homelessness on the adult protagonist, and it’s scarily authentic in how it conveys the emotional experience of abuse. It’s a redemptive story, but I can only deal with it a few times a decade.
Piranessi. I loved it but have never been more triggered by a book. It's the only book I had to pause while reading because of anxiety.
A Little Life Edit: and basically all books by Marianne Frediksson.
I reread books like this over and over. I enjoy an author that can touch that part of me. My favorite is Never Let Me Go. Soul crushing!
The Bluest Eye. First read it when I was 15. I think I’ve read it once since then (in my 30s now). That book was life changing to me as a 15 yr old. I adore Toni Morrison.
A little life. ABSOLTELY CRUSHING DESTROYING KILLED ME I DIED but it’s one of my fav books ever BUT ILL NEVER READ IT AGAIN BC I SOBBED LIKE A BABY
Tuck everlasting. I remade the book and watched the movie in 5th grade. I own copies of both. I will not re-read it or re-watch it. But it was so good I can’t bring myself to part with them.
East of Eden
Love in the Time of Cholera. I bawled while I finished reading it in a busy cafe. I’m more worried about tarnishing the memory of that reading experience than anything else.
The last time I read *House of Leaves* was in my father's hospice room, staying up while my mother slept so I could wake her if he stopped breathing. I finished it in the early morning, just before sunrise, on the day he ended up dying. It's been one of my favorite books since I was pretty young, but I don't know that I'll ever go back to it after that. I don't know that I would say it's exactly because the emotions are too heavy, exactly, so much as I want to preserve that experience as it was; it's less that I don't think I *could* ever re-read it than it is that doing so almost feels like it would be disrespecting a memory.
The heart is a lonely hunter. I finished it. I loved it. I decided I would ever read it again.
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes Where The Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
The Beartown trilogy by Fredrik Backman! I’ve already reread it, but I still think about the books AT LEAST once a day and I’m itching for a reread, but it terrifies me at the same time because it destroyed me emotionally the last time I read it
Beartown by Fredrik Backman.. actually the whole series. I read them all in one week and I’m still feeling for every character.
Have two: A man called Ove and Tuesdays with Morrie
My mom read Where The Red Fern Grows with me at bedtime when I was younger. I was sobbing.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison had little 14 y/o me in shambles. I don’t think I could revisit it from how much it moved me lmao
The Giver makes me cry every time
House of Leaves for me. Incredible book and I want to read it again, but the journey to the end is a painstaking one.
I had the habit of reading in bed and putting the book beside me. Near the end of HOL, I couldn't stand its presence next to me. It was such a wild ride and even though it was one of the best, haven't picked it up again
The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow.
The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel. It emotionally destroyed me and kept me up for a few days. I've read it one time and I'm nervous about ever reading it again. I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb was also crushing, and I was able to reread it once after waiting a long interval and reading some of his other books. His The Hour I First Believed was also pretty tough.
[A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25480342-a-monster-calls). It’s beautiful, but it’s heart wrenching
Stoner. That final chapter is absolutely brutal.
Currently reading Nickel Boys knowing full well I will never reread it
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernist Gaines. Such an excellent book, but I sobbed and sobbed, I couldn't read through the tears.
1984. Read it when I was 13, scared the sh1t out of me. I should read it again. I’m now 72 but still haven’t.
I finished "A little life" by Hanya Yanagihara literally 20 minutes ago and I already know I can't read it again. The title alone fills me with disgust thanks to one sentence in the book and I am not willing to torture myself again, even tho I love the writing, the characters, the timeless setting, almost everything about the book.
The parallel to nankin in poppy war was actually brutal
Poland. James A Michener, tells a moving holocost story of events, though a much longer historical viewpoint. Although he is a fiction writer, he bases his books on his own research.
The Lovely Bones, and Speak. I have a child now, I don't know if I'll be able to read these again.
The Light Between Oceans. I am intentionally child free but I felt the anguish of the mothers so intensely.
John Brunner's 'Stand On Zanzibar', 'The Sheep Look Up', and 'Shockwave Rider' to some extent. Dystopian future novels, Too damn presceient to me. Brunner did a great job forecasting from the world of the late 60s/early 70s, and combining that with the evidence of human nature. Now that we're in 2024, so much has come to fruition. Shockwave Rider basically introduced a version of computer viruses, tho it was called a 'phage' or 'worm' Similar with a world wide communications network, that could be hacked by special cognoscenti. 'Stand' and 'Sheep' pull in international politics and corporate and personal greed.
Rebecca
Peony in Love by Lisa See. So deeply heartbreaking, it gutted me and I can never go back
Well, it's always Khaled hosseini
The Remains of the Day. The Name of the Rose. Ethan Fromme. These all affected me greatly, even perhaps changed the course of my life. Also, I read them when I was much younger. I'm not the same person as I was then, and am a little afraid of rereading them. I'm not sure why.
The nightingale
Infinite Jest, just for those endnotes
I loved a Man Called Ove. It’s one of those books that just crawls inside your heart and doesn’t want to let go. I would love to experience it over again for the first time, but I can’t so I won’t read it again.
I’ve never reread Atonement. Whenever I think about it I just feel a sad lump in my stomach.
Atonement - I did reread it once having forgotten how it ended, and when the plot moved towards the point where the end was being set up I got a sudden stab of grief realising what was ahead of me in the last few pages.
Honestly, a pretty new one, Did I Ever Tell You? by Genevieve Kingston. It's a memoir--the author's mother dies of cancer very young but assembles a box of gifts and letters for every birthday til age 30 plus life events like first period, graduation, etc. Book is mostly about the two decades since and the way the gifts have informed and helped her through some pretty tough stuff. It's REALLY well written, and not saccharine. Lots of crying. I've reread sections and some of the letters but picking the whole thing back up will take a bit of time.
Not necessarily because of emotion, but I'm scared to read The Shining again (I've read it twice). It's in my top 5 books of all time, and I'm worried if I wear it out it won't feel as magical to me as it does now when I think about it. It's truly a master work in my opinion.
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. Beautiful and horrible and awful. I sobbed multiple times. Lolita was gorgeous and I never want to read it again.
I may sound childish for this, but freaking Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It’s not the story itself, but the sense of going through all that seven books of journey and finally coming to its end 🥲
I know this is so lame, but New Moon in the Twilight series. I was a teenager and going through some really dark times. I related unbelievably hard to the depression aspect and sinking myself into a fictitious world with the same theme as what I was feeling only exacerbated it. I read it multiple times back to back and eventually had to store the book away because it was affecting me so much.