" I was just learn it for some extra deferred payment during our building block on WWI in high school . It left me in tears and wholly alter my prospect on state of war . "
A great book can make you feel a wide range ofemotionsin only a few hundred pages. Sometimes, you stumble across a rare book that leaves such an emotional impact on you, it stays with you for years to come.
Recently, IaskedtheBuzzFeed Communitywhich books had the biggest emotional impact on them.
Here are 19 of their top responses:
1.“Sweetgrass Basketby Marlene Carvell. It’s a young reader’s prose based on two Mohawk sisters during the era when Indigenous children were sent to boarding schools. I read it first in sixth grade, and it has stuck with me for the last ten years.”
" I ultimately buy my own copy . Cried harder than I think of when reading it before . "
— peachytaurus
Get your copyhere !
2.“Sharp Objectsby Gillian Flynn. Her writing is so vibrant that I pictured everything happening in my head as I read the book. It left me with a really uneasy feeling, almost like I was trying to forget an ugly memory, but I kind of liked that.”
" I had never really had that type of impingement from reading a book before . It definitely made me need more . I enjoyedGone GirlandDark Places , butSharp Objectsreigns supreme . "
— bovineeyes
3.“The Outsidersby S.E. Hinton. Something about it really just kind of gut-punched me. It was the first book that made me cry.”
" It ’s just so well - written and interesting . I recommend it to everyone who has n’t already read it ! "
— elissad3
4.“All the Bright Placesby Jennifer Niven. It handles grief and mental health, and life and death so beautifully, and the characters are so rich and easy to connect to. I readAll the Bright Placesonce or twice every single year, and I end up sobbing for HOURS every time I finish it even though I already know how it ends.”
" Finch is probably my preferent fiber of all time , in any book . And the way Niven portray him ? As someone who has shin with genial unwellness my whole life , his character is so spectacularly , perfectly done . I get it on Finch , I enjoy Violet , and I screw their story . ( Even though it produce me holler . ) "
— wendyhaddon
5.“Song of Achillesby Madeline Miller. It was the only book I’ve read that truly made me sob.”
" Though it is a romance type book , I absolutely loved it , and the ending rip my pump to shred every clip ! "
— hannahcipollina
6.“All Quiet on the Western Frontby Erich Maria Remarque. I was just reading it for some extra credit during our unit on WWI in high school. It left me in tears and completely changed my outlook on war.”
" It should be require reading for everyone , so they can all see how horrendously savage and useless wars are . "
— hailcthulhu
7.“The No-Showby Beth O’Leary. It’s essentially arom-com, but the big plot twist in it knocked me down. I remember reading and bawling. I actually had to stop for a while to compose myself.”
" I even sent a DM to the generator on Instagram ( which she very kindly reply to ) because I was so moved by that book . It ’s so amazing . "
— melinaarangel
8.“One Hundred Years of Solitudeby Gabriel García Márquez. It’s the only book that ever made me cry for ten minutes straight after a character died.”
" I literally had to move to a dissimilar room because I could n’t palm it . And despite all the magical realism the novel contains , it ’s one of the realest piece of literature I ’ve understand . "
— hof
9.“The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulaneby Kate DiCamillo. I was teaching fourth grade at the time and was reading ahead obviously to prepare for the lessons, but I got caught up in this book. I decided to wait and read the chapters to the students so we both had a first read. Once I read the ending, I literally threw the book (sorry Kate) because I was so moved by the ending.”
" The youngster went wild over it , and I ’m really glad we got to experience that together . "
— tmc1234
10.“Tuck Everlastingby Natalie Babbitt. It made me laugh and cry, and have multiple existential crises.”
" Never did I think such a tiny ledger could throng such a brawny story . "
— andrewfirriolo
11.“I readAnd the Band Played Onby Randy Shilts at 18. It is an investigative journalist’s exposé of the AIDS crisis covering the first known case all the way through the 1980s told in a narrative style. You meet real characters and fall in love with them, only to slowly watch them die, and it’s heart wrenching.”
" You also meet doctors desperately trying to feel treatments for terminally ominous patient under a refinement of unrelenting anti - homophile mindset that see the disease as divine penalty . You meet the children of IV drug substance abuser who never get to leave the hospital in their myopic life . You meet partners watching their loved one die , ineffective to have any rights to resolve their burial or funeral because gay marriage was illegal .
It select something often portray like an after - schooling special and makes it very genuine in all its ugliness . I think I cried every chapter , but it made me see the horrific traumas suffered by older member of the LGBTQ community and how far we ’ve do . "
— omgitsaclaire
12.“The Speed of Darkby Elizabeth Moon is probably the most life-changing book I’ve ever read. The first-person main character is high-functioning autistic, and their thought processes eerily echoed my own in a way no other fictional character had before.”
" Six month and an evaluation later , I had an official diagnosing of Asperger ’s Syndrome . "
— toothlessfeline
13.“The Lions of Little Rockby Kristin Levine. It’s my favorite book of all time (even though it’s middle grade) because I’m a sucker for historical fiction. It’s such a beautiful story about friendship during segregation and racial uncertainty, and every time you read it, it feels like the first time all over again.”
" This book of account is criminally underrated . One detail that I love the most is that the ending is bright , not happy , because it ’s set during 1958 . It would n’t make sense for everyone to love each other and for the white girl and the Black girl to be friends with sunshine and rainbows . rather , the ending is bright . Marlee is bright for change . All in all , RUN , do n’t walk to grease one’s palms this book . "
— supersinger14
14.“The only thing I can thank my tenth-grade English teacher for is expanding my literary tastes from light fantasy to thought-provoking hard science fiction by recommending I read Robert A. Heinlein’sStranger in a Strange Land. That book was a real eye-opener for a teenager in the late ‘80s.”
" While I have since outgrown many of Heinlein ’s doctrine , his account book were my gateway to a much broader and rich world of ideas . "
15.“Unsouledby Will Wight. TheCradleseries is incredible. It pulled out some of the most painful, and some of the most beautiful, pieces of my heart and showed me a fundamentally different way to be with them.”
" If you ’ve ever willingly walk away from the mankind you knew to become who you are supposed to be , Lindon will take the air with you . "
— chaoticemmes
16.“Margaret Atwood’sThe Handmaid’s Tale. It was assigned either junior or senior year (so 1990ish for me). There was something about the frankness of Offred’s voice, coupled with the most relatable dystopian world-building I’d ever read, that truly had me recognizing myself and the world I was living in.”
" I ’m not saying the novel made me a feminist , but it was the outset of my journeying towards the realization that my body is inviolable and that my thought and eubstance are own by me and me alone . "
— filmteach
17.“Where the Red Fern Growsby Wilson Rawls still makes me emotional even though I haven’t actually read it since I was ten. I was looking for something to read, and it was on a bookshelf. I had no idea what I was getting into. It was like a punch in the gut.”
" I ’ve essay record it again over the age but never manage to terminate it . I still imagine it ’s agood book . I ’m beaming I scan it , but it seems readable that it ’ll likely be a book I only ever understand all the way through once .
funnily , I did n’t have that sort of visceral response to other books about puerility , spring up up , and/or losing darling . "
— torbielillies
18.“Slaughterhouse-Fiveby Kurt Vonnegut made a big impact on me before I really ever connected to it emotionally. I wrote a term paper on it in high school and started a love for his books because of how witty and goofy he was in his stories. Like, how someone could relate WWII PTSD to being abducted by aliens and traveling through space and time was wild to me and he managed to make light of a really serious subject.”
" What I did n’t cognise until much later on is that Kurt Vonnegut used write as a style of expressing unmanageable emotions and thought he experienced during his bouts with PTSD . Not just about the state of war he campaign in , but about other traumatic things that chance to him throughout his liveliness . His book are also connected in one universe — you ’ll see honorable mention of Kilgore Trout throughout his books , and Elliott Rosewater and Billy Pilgrim as well . The man had a bent for writing the most bizarre stories and somehow manage to connect them all in a logical timeline / population . "
— goldenlion71
19.And finally: “IDGAF if people find this a cliche or try hard answer, butThe Great Gatsbyby F. Scott Fitzgerald. It stopped me cold when I first read it that NOBODY wins, nobody’s a good guy, this world is so beautiful and unreal, and that was the point of the book.”
" That ’s the gut punch for me every time , and I love the account book for it . "
— siobhans4c1ab44c7
Note : Some response have been edit for length / lucidity .
