Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are was published in 1963 to great critical acclaim. Brian O’Doherty of The New York Times said that Mr. Sendak’s work, “disguised in fantasy, springs from his earliest self, from the vagrant child that lurks in the heart of all of us.” Billy has long dreamt of owning not one, but two, dogs. So when he’s finally able to save up enough money for two pups to call his own—Old Dan and Little Ann—he’s ecstatic. It doesn’t matter that times are tough; together they’ll roam the hills of the Ozarks. Soon Billy and his hounds become the finest hunting team in the valley. Stories of their great achievements spread throughout the region, and the combination of Old Dan’s brawn, Little Ann’s brains, and Billy’s sheer will seems unbeatable. But tragedy awaits these determined hunters—now friends—and Billy learns that hope can grow out of despair, and that the seeds of the future can come from the scars of the past. The remainder of the book discusses the different feelings that bereavement brings, and ways of coping with them including distracting oneself and expressing feelings through writing. It also describes how Rosen found his despair lifting and how he was able to deal with his grief and think about the good times he had with his son. [2] Reception [ edit ]

Sad Books That Will Emotionally Wreck You | Penguin Random 15 Sad Books That Will Emotionally Wreck You | Penguin Random

In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future. Despite my spotty history of book recommendations, I work in a bookstore now. The other day a woman walked up to the counter holding a copy of Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air. “Will this make me cry?” she asked me. I told her: yes, it will. I insisted she buy it anyways. Examining the lives of ordinary Haitians, particularly those struggling to survive under the brutal Duvalier regime, Danticat illuminates the distance between people’s desires and the stifling reality of their lives. They didn’t talk. Not for ten years. Not about faith anyway. Instead, a mother and daughter tiptoed with pain around the deepest gulf in their lives—the daughter’s choice to leave the church, convert to Islam and become a practicing Muslim. Undivided is a real-time story of healing and understanding with alternating narratives from each as they struggle to learn how to love each other in a whole new way.

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Grief, when it comes, is nothing like we expect it to be,” Joan Didion wrote after losing the love of her life. “The people we most love do become a physical part of us,” Meghan O’Rourke observed in her magnificent memoir of loss, “ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.” Those wildly unexpected dimensions of grief and the synaptic traces of love are what celebrated British children’s book writer and poet Michael Rosen confronted when his eighteen-year-old son Eddie died suddenly of meningitis. Never-ending though the process of mourning may be, Rosen set out to exorcise its hardest edges and subtlest shapes five years later in Michael Rosen’s Sad Book ( public library) — an immensely moving addition to the finest children’s books about loss, illustrated by none other than the great Quentin Blake. This is the story of a mentally disabled man whose experimental quest for intelligence mirrors that of Algernon, an extraordinary lab mouse. In poignant diary entries, Charlie tells how a brain operation increases his IQ and changes his life. As the experimental procedure takes effect, Charlie’s intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment seems to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance—until Algernon begins his sudden, unexpected deterioration. Will the same happen to Charlie? Whatever the reasons, books that make you cry are often powerful in one way or another. I mean, think about it—crying is an intense emotional response. It can even be good for you ! Below, you’ll find a list of the must-read books that make you cry, divided into genres. There are, of course, more genres than those below, but these were the ones I found most often when doing my research. My very tearful research. If you have books you’d like to add, please comment and share them with us! Sadie White’s summer job is at the beach, but she won’t be working as a lifeguard. Since her mom is pregnant and refuses to work, Sadie will be taking over as a domestic servant for a wealthy family on a nearby island. Now Nicholas has an empire to run. He doesn’t have time for distractions and Livvy’s sudden reappearance in town is a major distraction. She’s the one woman he shouldn’t want…so why can’t he forget how right she feels in his bed?

Sad Books that Will Rip Your Soul to Pieces ‹ Literary Hub Sad Books that Will Rip Your Soul to Pieces ‹ Literary Hub

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch

Set in Mississippi at the height of the Depression, this is the story of one family’s struggle to maintain their integrity, pride, and independence in the face of racism and social injustice. And it is also Cassie’s story—Cassie Logan, an independent girl who discovers over the course of an important year why having land of their own is so crucial to the Logan family, even as she learns to draw strength from her own sense of dignity and self-respect. Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. Actually, that's not entirely fair, because although Östlund makes his points with unapologetic frankness, the Swedish writer-director's first English-language film shows that he is still capable of quietly uncomfortable, penetrating social comedy. This is what we get in the opening scenes, when the film appears to be a straightforward lampoon of the fashion industry. In advertising shoots, notes Östlund, the more expensive the brand, the more grumpy the models have to pretend to be. As for the title, the "triangle of sadness" is the term given to the frown lines between your eyebrows.