Book Information Day 5 Challenge

I've had a couple of days off from writing about my reading habits because the weather has been too lovely to stay inside.
My girlfriend was free for a bike ride so instead of blogging I was on the motorbike heading for the east coast of Tassie. There is a wonderful coffee shop there and we sat drinking coffee, eating lunch and chatting about.......bike riding and motorbikes and other girl gossip.  A great day out.

We are having unseasonably warm weather and although Aussies believe the first day of spring begins on 1 September I don't acknowledge it until the equinox on the 21-22 September. So far I have not been able to find out why Australia uses the first day of the month for seasonal changes when the rest of the world doesn't.  That is probably why they do it.

The topic for today is to   List Some Tearjerkers You Have Read. 

It is difficult to talk about tear jerkers on a spring like day after a long dark winter. Books can be tear jerkers to me for any number of reasons. It can have a very sad ending. A favourite character might die or worse yet a favourite animal character might die. Now that will bring tears any time of the day or night.
It might be a sad story such as war, or child abuse or something else that is generally awful going on in the world.
A tear jerker may also be one of those great sporting achievement stories one reads. Person from down and out, dirt poor, maybe a Mississippi back road with no parents, grows up to achieve some amazingly impossible sporting achievement that no one thought he/she could do.  The team of misfits wins, the disabled adult endures terrific challenges to have a win. I actually might cry more in a tale of that over someone dying at the end of a book.

The third type of tear jerker for me might be a an extremely happy ending. Maybe the missing child is found, maybe the old dog of the elderly man won't die after all (think James Herriot stories).

I had to think back to books I have read and I did manage to remember a few tear jerkers both sad and happy.

Who loved the ending of Stephen King's short story The Shawshank Redemption

and later the film with Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman?  Can anyone keep a dry eye when Robbins gets his own back from the horribly sadistic warden and they end up in Mexico free men? Wonderful stuff.

Then there was the story Marley and Me. Not great literature but guaranteed to cause tears at the end when he dies an old lovable dog after so many years of terrible mischief.

Tuesdays with Morrie with Morrie the elderly man dying of a degenerative disease and his past student sitting by his bedside every week learning all of the lessons the man had to share of life before his death.

Another book that really got me was On My Own by Sarah Delaney. Sarah Delaney was an African American woman who lived for 109 years. She lived in a large family and when almost 100 years old she wrote her biography. At age 102 she wrote another book entitled The Everyday Wisdom of the Delaney Sisters. She and her sister Bessie never married and lived together their entire lives. Bessie was 4 years her junior. At age 106 Sarah lost her 102 year old sister Bessie when she died and she wrote a book about life without her. It was one of the saddest books. She had wonderful memories of her but just missed her so incredibly much.  Neither sister had ever married, Bessie had been a dentist and Sarah a teacher. The stories were amazing and I loved everything about the three books and the ladies themselves. Sarah lived another 3 years without Bessie, dying about 3 years later after the book was published. Mega tearjerker.

Then there are books like The Help where justice prevails, Animal Farm upset me terribly when Boxer the old horse was sent away. I almost had night mares about that. Black Beauty is another tear jerker horse story.
Time Traveller's Wife-the ending. How hard was that? Little Women when Beth dies?

Don't we just love a good tear jerker.  Well I could think of many more but I'd rather know what 3 books you have read that caused you to wipe away a little tear.