Skip to main content

Top Ten Tuesday meme: Books that broke my heart a little

It's Tuesday, and that means the The Broke and the Bookish are accepting contributions to their Top Ten Tuesdays meme. There is a little bit of an anti-Valentine's Day sentiment going on, as they are asking for books that broke the readers' hearts a little.

Please visit some of the other participating blogs. If you like books full of emotion, you may find some great reads.

Warning: SPOILERS ahead!

  • Anne of Green Gables, Anne’s House of Dreams and Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery. All concern deaths. If you have read them, you’ll know which ones. I’m counting them as one, because of the similar themes and because the books all belong to the same series.
  • The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. The book was fine - but the ending of the story of Arwen and Aragorn in the appendixes was heartbreaking.
  • Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Not because of Beth’s death, although that was sad, but because Jo’s dreams never came true.
  • The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. Because they don’t get to be together when they have saved the world.
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling. Not because of all the deaths, but because it’s the last book in the series and it doesn’t look like there will be more.
  • Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai. Because of all the tragedies in it, big and small, that echo reality.
  • The Diary of Anne Frank. So full of hopes and dreams and plans, but all the time you know how her story ended.
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. If you have read it, you’ll know why. If not, I challenge you to read it.
  • Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie. This is a twofold tragedy. As a child I was saddened by the fact that Wendy had to grow up while Peter remained a child, but as an adult I see that by remaining a child forever, Peter will never grow up to experience the pains and pleasures of adulthood, especially the joys of parenthood that Wendy has experienced.
  • Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Not so much because the protagonist dies by his own hand, but because he was driven to it by a society that treated him like a freak because he was different.
Labels:

Comments

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz said…
These are all terribly sad. And realistic, right? Life is full of tragic endings. Unfortunately.


Here's my Top Ten Books That Broke My Heart a Little.

I'd like to invite you to sign up for my February Giveaway! Win All Kinds of Kisses or a $25 Amazon gift card!
February 14, 2012 12:08 pm
MJ Thomas said…
Good list.... I had forgotten Anne of Green Gables when I made my list. I think Matthew's death affected me a lot more than the deaths in the other books.

Here's my list: M.J.'s Top Ten
February 14, 2012 3:05 pm
Kristina said…
Oh I forgot about The Amber Spyglass! Harry Potter, all those characters, it is so terrible.

http://kristina-worldofbooks.blogspot.com/2012/02/top-10-tuesdays-11.html
February 14, 2012 4:31 pm
Unknown said…
Aragon and Arwen <33 After reading their full story I almost wished I had just stopped reading after the end of Return of the King..:(
February 14, 2012 4:31 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down
Post a Comment
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove
Post a Comment
Read more

First book of 2020: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach (reading notes)

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I loathe movie tie-in book covers because I feel they are (often) trying to tell me how I should see the characters in the book. The edition of Deborah Moggach's These Foolish Things that I read takes it one step further and changes the title of the book into the title of the film version as well as having photos of the ensemble cast on the cover. Fortunately it has been a long while since I watched the movie, so I couldn't even remember who played whom in the film, and I think it's perfectly understandable to try to cash in on the movie's success by rebranding the book. Even with a few years between watching the film and reading the book, I could see that the story had been altered, e.g. by having the Marigold Hotel's owner/manager be single and having a romance, instead being of unhappily married to an (understandably, I thought) shrewish wife. It also conflates Sonny, the wheeler dealer behind the retireme
Post a Comment
Read more