Fancy a Good Cry?

Have you ever put a book down to sob? David Nicholls, Independent writer and British novelist, sure has. This week, he shares his list of the “Top Ten Literary Tear Jerkers”—books that have left the pages of his library more than a little damp. Great Expectations tops his list, particularly for its moving scene between Pip and the Magwitch. Of Tess of the D’Ubervilles, Nicholls writes, “I still find the book as overwhelming now as when I first read it at seventeen.” He includes Tender is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. But one of the saddest of all, Nicholls writes, is Charlotte’s Web: “This was the first piece of prose that really moved me, and the first portrayal of death that really hit home (and this from someone who actively hates spiders.)”