Top Ten Tuesdays – This week, the Broke and the Bookish are listing out books that evoked strong emotions – from crying and laughing out loud to hurling the book at the wall! So here is my list:

1. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy – This was a book I shed a lot of tears over, left the pages moist and even now am sure that this book will evoke the same response in me.
2. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini – I cried a lot shedding silent tears and making my husband wonder what he did wrong! This book also managed to make me feel angry and totally helpless when I could not help the little boy.
3. What Katy Did – This was my favorite book for a long, long time when I was a little girl and I admired Katy for her strength, cried for her when she did not, laughed when she had fun.
4. Black Beauty – How I cried for Beauty; I read and reread and cried all over again as a young girl and when Beauty finally finds love and her good human friend back at the end, I was so happy for her.
5. Anne Frank, the Diary of a Young Girl – This is not a work of fiction but facts which made it all the more capable of making me feel – rage at what happened to Anne and the millions of others, at the horrors of war, sadness at the thought of the lives lost, smiles at the amusing anecdotes Anne wrote about made all the more so because of their situation, and awe at Anne’s spirit and strength.
6. The Darling Buds of May – I first watched the TV series in India when I was in high school. When I found the book at a library sale at my local library a few years back, I just had to read it. I found the book way more enjoyable (loved the TV series too) – the Larkins family antics leave you laughing till you hurt..
7. Uncle Tom’s  Cabin – I was a young girl when I read this book and missed many references to Christianity which many reviewers talked about which might change how I feel about this if I read it now. But when I read it then, I was angered by how slaves were treated, cried for them and felt I should crusade for anything like this anywhere in the world.
8. To Kill A Mockingbird – again, the unfairness of life, class systems in society, racism,justice, fighting for what is right – all these ingredients in the book – brought out all sorts of emotions in me – anger, sadness, and happiness.
9. Life of Pi – When I read this book, I did not delve deep into it. I was simply amazed!
10. The Lord of the Flies – This book gave me the chills – I would not want humans to turn to their baser animal instincts if situations change as in this book. I wanted to stop reading it at many points in the book but kept going.

The following are short stories/smaller books but they had a profound impact on me when I read them first:
The Last Leaf by O’ Henry – a touching story of sacrifice, friendship and how faith and hope can help overcome a lot, this story remains in my memory (and almost all other stories by O’Henry)
The Nightingale and the Rose by Oscar Wilde
The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde
The Open Window by Saki – no one can make you laugh like Saki (and other stories by Saki)
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein – This book managed to make feel both awed and angry at
the giving tree – awed that someone could be so selfless and angry that
someone was so selfless while someone else was totally greedy.

Reading the list above made me realize I do not have too many books here which made me feel like hurling the book (thankfully, though I know I felt like that a couple of times, I do not recall the names of the books). It also made me realize I do not have many books that made me laugh and that is something I need to rectify, seriously. (I need to read ‘Three Men in a Boat’ first – have seen it on too many lists).
I read this quote in a WSJ article – Percy Russell, a book critic, believed funny books could help temper the
horrors of reality: “Never was the agency of a really cheerful
literature more needed, perhaps, than in these pessimistic,
high-pressure, feverish days.” Mr. Russell was writing in 1895.

Teaser Tuesdays
MizB of Should Be Reading hosts Teaser Tuesdays. Anyone can play along. Just do the following:
*Grab your current read.*Open to a random page.
*Share two “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page.

*Share the title and author too, so other TT participants can add it to their TBR lists if they like your teaser.
But she was surprised how angry her own lie made her feel. 

They might not have been the truth but they should have been.
Meyer, Philipp (2009-02-18). American Rust: A Novel (p. 49). Spiegel & Grau. Kindle Edition.