Books that made me weirdly emotional

As the title suggests, this post is going to be about books that made me weirdly emotional. I’m an emotional person in general, and it honestly doesn’t take much for me to get emotional when reading. But these books are going to be books where the emotion was weird or really specific. Not just “this was a sad book and I was sad because of the book,” though those books are great too. But weird emotions. You’ll see what I mean below.

I also wanted to say that this post was inspired by the Top 5 Tuesday topic for later this month, which is books that drained my emotions. So thank you so much, Shanah, for the inspiration!

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Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

The emotions I felt while reading this book were definitely caused by what was happening in my life when I was reading the book. I began reading it the day before I moved across the country, so I was reading it when I was flying away from my family. Like, literally on the airplane right after saying good bye. And in the book, the two sisters have to abruptly leave their country and family and it’s really tragic and really sad.

So I was so incredibly emotional, largely because I was moving (which was a ton of emotions, including good ones), and I honestly think my real-life emotions mixed in with my book emotions. At one point I was sobbing about the book, and it’s tragic and sad but not something I’d be sobbing about, and my boyfriend was like “what’s wrong?” and I was like THIS BOOK IS TOO SAD. In retrospect, I really shouldn’t have been reading it at this point in my life when all those real-life things were happening, but I did anyway.

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Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

This book just made me realize that there are some things I will never be able to understand. I do my best to educate myself on issues, which is one of the reasons I wanted to read this book. And going in, I considered myself to be fairly well-read and educated on BLM and race struggles. BUT (as dumb as this may sound) this book was the first time I realized that I would never truly understand. I can read as much as I want and empathize as much as I want, but I will never truly understand the struggles. Which is an important thing to realize. I have a whole discussion on this book, which you can read here!

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Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor

There’s one line in this book that I think is so overlooked, and it made me so emotional because it’s something that I think about all the time.

“He understood in that moment that he was smaller than he had ever known, and the realm of the unknowable was bigger.”

Like, how beautiful is that. It’s exactly how I feel when I’m in the mountains, honestly. It’s as if Taylor could read my thoughts, and we went to the Rockies together, and she wrote down what I was feeling.

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Bloodhound (Beka Cooper #3) by Tamora Pierce

BECAUSE OF THE THING. If you’ve read this series, you know the tragic thing that happens at the end of this book. AGH it makes me so sad. I literally sobbed. When I first read it, I was sad and angry and frustrated with the character, and sad again. Which I think is the point, honestly. It wasn’t just supposed to be sad and tragic, but you were also supposed to be mad at the character. And it made the character SO GOOD, despite how mad you are with them.

(I just texted my best friend about it and she said “can you fuck off that’s very rude”)

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Pinball, 1973 (The Rat #2) by Haruki Murakami

Idek how to explain the emotions this one made me feel. It made me feel nostalgia. Like, the feeling that Ed Sheeran tries to capture in Castle on the Hill is how this book feels. It made me cry? and it’s not even really sad? There’s one part in it that I took a picture of because it was so…….idk, poignant?

This bit here. Like…..wow.

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So, those are some books that made me weirdly emotional! What about you? Have you read any of these? Are there any books that made you feel weird emotions? Let me know!

Thanks for reading! xx