The Sadness Book - A Journal To Let Go

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There’s a list of books that I love, but cannot bring myself to spring on random strangers. They’re books I adore deeply, have changed my life and cut to my core, but, so help me, they are bleak. They hurt. The first time I came across Claire Vaye Watkins’s stunning story collection Battleborn, I had to pause every few paragraphs to collect myself. Her stories, most of which are set in the deserts of Nevada, stood out with such sharp, precise clarity that everything else I had read before and after that felt like a fuzzy dream. The short stories of Joy Williams have had a similar effect on me—surgeon’s warning: be prepared for sudden onsets of intense emotional pain. Read her story “Taking Care,” which skulks along snowy New England so beautifully that you hardly notice the despair lurking under the ice, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Seventeen-year-old Bianca Piper may not be the prettiest girl in her high school, but she has a loyal group of friends, a biting wit, and a spot-on BS detector. She’s also way too smart to fall for the charms of man-slut and slimy school hottie Wesley Rush, who calls Bianca the Duff—the Designated Ugly Fat Friend—of her crew. But things aren’t so great at home and Bianca, desperate for a distraction, ends up kissing Wesley. Worse, she likes it. Eager for escape, Bianca throws herself into a closeted enemies-with-benefits relationship with him. Until it all goes horribly awry. It turns out Wesley isn’t such a bad listener, and his life is pretty screwed up, too. Suddenly Bianca realizes with absolute horror that she’s falling for the guy she thought she hated more than anyone. In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd, swept up by the tides of the Great Migration, flees Georgia and heads north. Full of hope, she settles in Philadelphia to build a better life. Instead she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment, and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins are lost to an illness that a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children, whom she raises with grit, mettle, and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them to meet a world that will not be kind. Their lives, captured here in twelve luminous threads, tell the story of a mother’s monumental courage—and a nation’s tumultuous journey. Only three books have made me full-blown ugly cry: The Selected Stories of Alice Munro (“The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” if we’re being specific), Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, and the fifth Harry Potter book.

Best Sad Books to Read When You Need a Good Ugly Cry The 25 Best Sad Books to Read When You Need a Good Ugly Cry

A net of shadows begins to tighten around the Shadowhunters of the London Institute. Mortmain plans to use his Infernal Devices, an army of pitiless automatons, to destroy the Shadowhunters. He needs only one last item to complete his plan: he needs Tessa Gray.Charlotte Branwell, head of the London Institute, is desperate to find Mortmain before he strikes. But when Mortmain abducts Tessa, the boys who lay equal claim to her heart, Will and Jem, will do anything to save her. On the advice of a therapist, Riley starts an anonymous blog to vent those pent-up feelings and tell the truth of what it’s really like to be a gender fluid teenager. But just as Riley’s starting to settle in at school—even developing feelings for a mysterious outcast—the blog goes viral, and an unnamed commenter discovers Riley’s real identity, threatening exposure. And Riley must make a choice: walk away from what the blog has created—a lifeline, new friends, a cause to believe in—or stand up, come out, and risk everything.

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Hilary hates Jews. As part of a neo-Nazi gang in her town, she’s finally found a sense of belonging. But when she’s critically injured in an accident, everything changes. Somehow, in her mind, she has become Chana, a Jewish girl fighting for her own life in the ghettos and concentration camps of World War II. 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 ] What makes me most sad is when I think about my son Eddie. I loved him very, very much but he died anyway. Freshly disengaged from her fiancé and feeling that life has not turned out quite the way she planned, thirty-year-old Ruth quits her job, leaves town and arrives at her parents’ home to find that situation more complicated than she’d realized. Her father, a prominent history professor, is losing his memory and is only erratically lucid. Ruth’s mother, meanwhile, is lucidly erratic. But as Ruth’s father’s condition intensifies, the comedy in her situation takes hold, gently transforming her.

Must-Read Sad Books that Make You Cry | Book Riot 100 Must-Read Sad Books that Make You Cry | Book Riot

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? That was the deal. Every year, Livvy Kane and Nicholas Chandler would share one perfect night of illicit pleasure. The forbidden hours let them forget the tragedy that haunted their pasts—and the last names that made them enemies.Jesmyn’s memoir shines a light on the community she comes from, in the small town of DeLisle, Mississippi, a place of quiet beauty and fierce attachment. Here, in the space of four years, she lost five young men dear to her, including her beloved brother—lost to drugs, accidents, murder, and suicide. This list on sad books that make you cry is sponsored by Libby. The one-tap reading app from OverDrive. There are some books that become renowned largely for their capacity to make people cry— just look at Jodi Picoult’s entire career. People enjoy going into a sad book like it’s some kind of a mountain to be climbed. We crave the emotional labor that comes with reading a book that is particularly difficult or sad. But what I also notice is the sense of camaraderie between readers that comes with a particularly trying text. 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.”

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

When fifteen-year-old Maribel Rivera sustains a terrible injury, the Riveras leave behind a comfortable life in Mexico and risk everything to come to the United States so that Maribel can have the care she needs. Once they arrive, it’s not long before Maribel attracts the attention of Mayor Toro, the son of one of their new neighbors, who sees a kindred spirit in this beautiful, damaged outsider. Their love story sets in motion events that will have profound repercussions for everyone involved. Ambrose Young was beautiful. The kind of beautiful that graced the covers of romance novels, and Fern Taylor would know. She’d been reading them since she was thirteen. But maybe because he was so beautiful he was never someone Fern thought she could have…until he wasn’t beautiful anymore.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? IM: This book slayed me. I remember sitting on the subway, reading the advanced reader copy. My hand was over my mouth, and my eyes were wet. The book is massive, by the way, so reading it and crying while trying to maneuver around New York City wasn’t easy. There was a lot of wrist pain happening. But the point is, the book is truly emotionally resonant. It follows the lives of four men who meet in their college dorm room. They become extremely close friends, all of them, although their friendships are different, the dynamics unique to each configuration. The writing is stunning, and the pacing is slow enough to make it feel like you’re really involved in the men’s lives. Malcolm, Willem, J.B., and Jude—these men will live in your heart by the time you’re halfway through the book. By the end, it’ll feel like they’re part of your family.