So how caught up in books do you get?

[jobycom]

When I was a teen, I used to get so caught up in characters in books I read that I would be sad for days over an unrequited love or a character death, and sometimes I would just be sad that the book was over and I no longer got to spend time with the characters I'd grown attached to. One book ended with one of my favorites being turned into a tree, thus preventing the romance the book had been building, and I was not only sad, I got so angry I wrote an alternate ending to the book.

It still happens to me now and then, usually over the most corny fantasy or genre novel, rather than something more substantative. Probably because the corny novels go straight for the emotions.

So anyway, last weekend I listened to a Stephen King audiobook while driving to and from my parent's house in Mississippi (about 1100 miles round trip), and the bastard killed my favorite character. You expect this with Stephen King, or any horror genre novel, of course, but he had set up several complex moral dilemmas involving the character's age and background, and it seemed to me that he needed a better resolution, so the laziness of the writing bothered me. I mean, it was Stephen King, so I wasn't expecting Melville, but even so, this was disappointing.

Worse, though, is for some reason this got me all blue for several days, for no reason. Still bothers me, no matter how silly I think that is. I mean, I invested a lot of time and emotion in this book, and he repaid me like this? To use the common DU parlance of the moment... Ugh. I wanted the character to live, and he had no reason to kill her other than to manipulate the reader and to avoid some difficult resolutions. Until then, I was thinking it was one of his best books, too.

Ever react like that to a book? Do you get that drawn into fiction, where the emotions you feel are as substantive as in real life? I don't mean just getting teared up easily over emotional scenes, I mean a lasting emotional reaction.

[Deep13]

1. I miss the sandworms of the deep desert. nt

[Rabrrrrrr]

3. Shai-hulud! I remember when I went through my spice agony.

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. Well-written fiction can draw me right i that way, and leave me feeling it for days afterward.

Sometimes even longer.

Lord of the Rings is one, also Dune and the Belgeriad. Hemingway has his way - To Have and Have Not and The Old Man and the Sea, as well as others. This Side of Paradise, certainly. To Kill a Mockingbird. Rebecca. The Iliad. Dante's Inferno. Rendezvous with Rama.

And there have also been many books that, while not leaving a lasting emotional impression per se, I have been very sad to have finished because I came to enjoy the characters so much.

[jobycom]

6. Lord of the Rings

did that to me when I was a teenager. I went on a fantasy binge trying to find another book to replicate the feeling, but of course never came close. It wasn't the subject of the book, it was the writing, and that's what no one could duplicate. The only fantasy writer I read anymore is Gene Wolf, who has that skill at his best.

I read Dune, but it was so long ago I barely remember it. Same with the Belgariad. I don't remember being overly impressed with either one, but I got more emotionally involved in the Belgariad, more intellectually involved in Dune. Some of the background in the Belgariad seemed inconsistent to me, but I don't remember all the details. I remember their being a paladin/knight sort who seemed out of place and archaic in the ethos they created. I always liked Raymond Feist better, but I haven't read either in ages.

Hemingway--The Old Man and the Sea, and The Sun Also Rises both got to me. The latter more, because I'm a sucker for a complicated, unrequited romance. He can toy with the emotions and the intellect while still being a deft wordsmith. Not many can.

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my top three. The Iliad and Dante's Inferno don't speak to me--maybe because I studied medieval and classical history so much I can't really read them for the story.

Interesting you mention "Rebecca," because King used that book throughout "Bag of Bones," which is the book that set me off. I keep meaning to read it, but haven't yet.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

9. Try The Name of the Wind

by Patrick Rothfuss. It is excellent and one of the most well written fantasy novels besides Lord of the Rings. I do not say this lightly. It is the first of a trilogy with the nexy due out in April, I believe.

[Forkboy]

4. The Years Of Rice And Salt has stuck with me big time since I first read it in 2003.

I've already read it three times now, and I keep getting something new out of it. It's one of the most fascinating books I've ever read. The last line in the novel is 100% perfect.

The book is set between about A.D. 1405 (783 solar years since the Hegira, by the Islamic calendar used in the book), and A.D. 2002 (1423 after Hegira). In the eighth Islamic century, almost 99% of the population of Medieval Europe is wiped out by the Black Death (rather than the approximately 30-60% that died in reality). This sets the stage for a world without Christianity as a major influence.

The novel follows a jāti of three to seven main characters and their reincarnation through the centuries in very different cultural and religious settings. The book features Muslim, Chinese (Buddhist, Daoist, Confucianist), American Indian, and Hindu culture, philosophy and everyday life. It mixes sophisticated knowledge about these cultures in the real world with their imagined global development in a world without Western Christendom.

The main characters, marked by identical first letters throughout their reincarnations, but changing in gender, culture-nationality and so on, struggle for progress in each life. Each chapter has a narrative style which reflects its setting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_rice_and_salt

[leftyclimber]

11. Another vote for Years of Rice and Salt

Something new every time. I've read it three or four times now. Tremendous book, and it's fun to follow the "real" history and science parallels.

[Forkboy]

14. YAY...someone else who has read it!

I was starting to think I was the only one who had even heard of it, yet alone read it.

It's odd, too, because KSR normally writes "hard" sci-fi, like his Mars trilogy, but this one is almost spiritual in nature, at least to me.

The whole book is a tour de force of scope and ideas. There's more ideas in this book than any ten novels combined.

One of the best novels I've ever read, hands down.

[EFerrari]

16. That sound a little like Lessing's Shikasta.

http://www.dorislessing.org/shikastaby.html

[Forkboy]

26. That sounds interesting.

I'll have to check my libraries for it.

Thanks.

[suninvited]

5. I didnt go to school for over a week

in junior high after I read Diary of Anne Frank. I just laid in my bed and cried all day.

[LibertyLover]

7. All the time

I really get into some stories and if the character I like dies I get really bummed. In one series I particularly like, the Deryni Trilogy written by Katherine Kurtz, my favorite character is a secondary character who is nonetheless integral to the story, especially in the 3rd book. He doesn't die, but there just isn't enough of him for me, so I started reading fan fiction and found that there was a small community of people who also liked the same character. It helps.

[MrCoffee]

8. I got all weepy over Dan Simmon's Hyperion

I re-read it while my daughter was sick with a flu, and the part about Saul and Rachel's relationship after she came down with Merlin's Sickness...still chokes me up thinking about it.

[TheCentepedeShoes]

10. The only one of his

I have read is The Terror - Arctic expedition gone wrong.

[azmouse]

24. Hey now! Don't go spoilin' the story for me.

It's on my reading pile and I should be getting to that book soon.

Have you read Summer of Night yet? One of Simmons best.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

12. I was exactly the same way.

Actually, I still am.
After finishing Harry Potter, I was crying, not only because of the ending, but because it was over. I had grown so attached to all the characters, especially MY Weasley twins.
I am sad when a character leaves my favorite TV show, or when it ends. I'm not the same for a while. It's like I've lost a friend. I bawled a couple of weeks ago when Abby left ER. She was my favorite. And then she kissed Luka and off they went. Oh, I was a mess.
It was much worse when I was a kid, because I was friendless most of the time, and my family was completely fucked up, so all I had were my friends in books and on TV.
Duckie

[DarkTirade]

13. Yeah, I tend to get emotionally attached to fiction a bit more than I should.

It was hard to finish reading the New Jedi Order series. Literally. Because every time Chewie was mentioned I kept getting misty-eyed and it was hard to keep reading.

[jobycom]

20. You ever get to where you don't want to start a new book because

you don't want to lose the connection to the one you just finished?

[InternalDialogue]

22. That happened to me when I read Shantaram two years ago.

I loved that book and the characters so dearly, I wanted the next book I read to get into me the same way.

Of course, it didn't happen. The next book wasn't as good. (Looking back, I should have picked up a classic or an old favorite to ease the transition.) I think the only way would be to open it up and start again. But I loaned Shantaram to a friend I rarely see, so I need to track down a new copy.

[EFerrari]

15. Fictional characters have always been as real as people to me.

I thought that was weird until grad school in English. Everyone else there related in pretty much the same way.

When my own life gets too stressful, I avoid novels like nosy relatives and only read history or biography (where the outcome of a character's progress is already a known known). In fact, even though when I was younger novel writing was something I assumed I'd do, as an adult it's pretty much the only form I haven't tried and probably for the same reason.

[jobycom]

17. I used to read the last page or two of a novel before I'd buy it.

I had to see if the main character was alive at the end, because of how caught up I got.

[EFerrari]

18. I've done that, too, but mostly with authors I don't know yet.

I think that's how I learned to skim articles. lol

[jobycom]

19. I never learned to skim

Made grad school tough.

[PassingFair]

21. I love the world of Dickens.

I see traits of all of his characters around
me every day.

[WildEyedLiberal]

23. Oh my God, yes

I reread the last Harry Potter book yesterday. JK Rowling is an adequate writer, but she is brilliant at creating flesh-and-blood characters who really get under your skin. I have literally about a hundred books lying around the house that I haven't read yet, but I picked up Harry Potter instead. I guess I just wanted to read something I knew I'd have an emotional connection with.

[applegrove]

25. I can only take in so much information at one time so it depends a great

deal how the book is written.

[reyd reid reed]

27. It can frustrate me, sure, and it often does...

but when that happens, I stop and realize that life in general doesn't always go the way we want it to and that often, even though it's frustrating and it seems like the 'easy' way out, I don't think it is. A writer's spent a long time with those characters and invested quite a bit into them and I'd think it'd be really hard for him to kill them. I'd much rather be taken by surprise like that (albeit an unpleasant one) than to have an ending either 1. obscenely ridiculous and implausible (think the ending to Hannibal) or 2. too pat and one that I saw coming by page 32.

Now I'm going to have to re-read Bag of Bones.

[InvisibleTouch]

28. Oh, I do the same, to this day.

Get caught up with characters to the point of adding them to my personal mythology over the span of years, get all emotional, write alternate/continued endings to books when I didn't like the outcome or didn't want it to end. Once I was reading a prehistorical novel and got so engrossed in it that my daily "modern" life looked alien to me once I finally looked up from the book. Nothing odd about it at all, IMO. Come to think of it, I watch TV series and movies that way too. Not all, to be sure, but some. I am by no means the proverbial passive viewer!

[InvisibleTouch]

29. (dupe deleted) n/t

[pilar007]

30. My husband wanted to divorce me after I read...............

Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe.

[PassingFair]

32. That one really sucks the air outta ya, doesn't it.

Even Elizabeth Taylor couldn't screw it up!

[Lucian]

31. I get really involved in books I read.

Spoiler:














When I was reading George R.R. Martin's A Storm of Swords and read the part where Robb Stark was killed, I got upset. I liked him. It bothered me that GRRM would kill off the King of the North. But then it didn't surprise me either.

[BarenakedLady]

33. Yes definately

I remember missing the characters from IT when it was over. I haven't gotten really emotionally invested in a book in a long time. Well actually I did cry real tears recently when a character was dying and saying goodbye to friends and family, but it didn't really last long after the book was over.

I think it was easier when I was younger to lose myself totally into what I was reading. There are too many grown-up distractions these days.

[YankeyMCC]

34. Oh certainly I know exactly what you mean

Perhaps the first time this happened to me was when I read "Mice and Men" I felt true, deep grief over Lenny. This was before I had any close family member die, in a very real way it was my first expirence with the death of a person I cared about.

"East of Eden" and really almost all of John Steinbeck's works have characters that I've come to care about deeply.

More recently it was the Hyperion novels by Dan Simmons, and in particular the character of Aenea, her fate affected me deeply.

Also recently was "Lavinia" by Ursula Le Guin and the title character, even though I'm a middle aged man and the character is a young woman.