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Showing posts from May, 2016

Update to the Tearjerkers list - A Man Called Ove

It happens sometimes that your heart fills so full that it spills down your face and steals your breath and sounds like sobs. And sometimes tears fill your throat and prickle your nose as you lie in the dark long after the story is done. And the tears are made of joy and hope and love and family, and they leave you feeling full instead of empty - that happens sometimes too. It happened this time.

Book Recommendations - Tearjerkers and Romance

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I was at an author's conference recently where a very high-powered film producer said, during a conversation about a book-pitch, "never, ever call a book a romance." Every timeless story has romantic elements, he said, but if you call a story a romance, even a story in which the central theme is the relationship between two people in love, you will effectively kill all its credibility. Kill all its credibility. Huh. (Insert rant here. It will be the subject of another post.) My book club read Me Before You this month. Now, to be perfectly fair to the book itself, I did read it in a day, I did shed a tear, and it was written well. My primary criticism of the book itself was that I didn't particularly like either of the two main characters (or anyone else in it for that matter) and didn't really care enough about them to heavily invest my emotions in their story. That's a personal opinion and feel free to yell about how much you loved the book. It won&