2015 Reading Challenge: Book That Made You Cry

[angelicmobster8]

I originally chose Black Beauty by Anna Sewell for my "Book that was made into a movie" category (Alan Cumming voices Black Beauty). I was thinking it would take me a while before I read a book that made me cry, if I found one at all. It ended up being the first one, of course.

A lot of older books have some outdated messages in them, but Black Beauty is still relevant and lovely. She has characters saying that ignorance is just as bad as cruelty, and it can be. This book was banned in South Africa in the 50s, because they didn't bother to read it. They (white censors) probably thought it was about a beautiful black woman and were all like "agh, no!"

Anna Sewell hurt her ankle when she was young, which may not be so bad today, but for a woman in the 1800s, it made her an "invalid". She could still ride horses though. It's kind of sad that she didn't write more about the Lady Harriet character, who is described as being an "invalid". The only books from that time that had disabled children, had them magically "fixed". Heidi for example.

Anyway, good book to start off the year. It also fit into these categories:

1. book that became a movie - I'll find another


2. book with non-human characters


3. book by a female author - most of the books I read are written by women, but they are all cis. So I'm going to keep a lookout for more transwomen authors.


4. a book set in a different country - for this one, I'm going to tweak it to "book set in non-western country". So no Canada, US, most of Europe, New Zealand, and Australia.


5. popular authors first book - it was her only book. In the future, I'll just have this as "debut novel"


6. more than 100 years old


7. book with a colour in the title


8. book by an author you never read before - a lot of them are going to be like this, so I'll change this next year as well


9. banned book