The Fault in Our Stars: can reading sad books be a positive thing?

Have you ever read a book that made you laugh or cry, actually out loud? I've had a few of them—The Harry Potter series has made me laugh many times over the years, and of course I cried when Dumbledore died (actually, I cried at some point during each of the last three books. But when Dumbledore died I both cried and threw the book to the floor. Yes I was twenty-two years old). The book Marley and Me had me alternately laughing and crying as I sat on a plane from Seattle to Burbank, and then as I sat reading for an hour afterward on a mercifully deserted train platform (if you've seen the film, it's crap, I know, but the book is honestly really really good, especially if you've ever owned a dog, and especially if your dog was badly behaved). I cried reading A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks (which I realize is lame but I was seventeen). I even got a little bit teary at the end of The Graveyard Book, when Bod ventures out into the wide world.

Photo: Amazon.co.uk

Last Friday I read another book that left me in floods of tears: John Green's new young adult novel The Fault in Our Stars. Though I had been waiting on the book for months, I honestly didn't know what to expect—I had loved the author's debut Looking for Alaska (another tear-inducing novel), but personally found his Paper Towns a bit underwhelming (despite its containing a lot of good ideas and Walt Whitman references). The Fault in Our Stars follows Hazel—a smart, insightful 16 year-old who also happens to be living with stage four cancer—as she meets and gets to know Augustus, a cancer survivor with a fondness for heroics, symbolism, and grand gestures. Together they share their love of reading, which—without giving too much away—leads to the central adventure of the story. Though there is obviously a lot in the book about illness, Green tries to avoid the clichés that Hazel so emphatically despises—in particular the brave, ever-positive, ever-inspirational cancer kid. Instead he tries to give the reader an honest picture of what it's like to live with a serious disease (according to his vlog, the story was inspired by his time working as a student chaplain in a children's hospital). The characters are complex, real, flawed, and variable. Which is one of the reasons the book is so heartbreaking.

But that brings me to my central concern of the week: why do we love books that make us cry? I mean, crying is bad, right? Yet I have a general rule that any book that actually makes me cry deserves at least four stars. Why? Because the author has made me care about these fictional characters to such an extent that I shed real tears at the tragedy of their situations—I mean, isn't that amazing? It's like magic to me. That kind of skill is what I aspire to. Not necessarily to make readers cry, but to be able to write such believable characters that the reader can't help but become emotionally invested in the story. Characters make or break a novel. Reading really good characters is entrancing, almost intoxicating, nearly addicting—we've all had books we couldn't put down. We've all (all of us who are readers, anyway) stayed up a little too late with a great book, arriving at work or school in the morning with shadows under eyes, mumbling about having had a few too many (chapters) last night. (And yes, while I realize that plot is very important in a novel, I would argue that without characters that the reader can care about, plot alone isn't enough to keep them turning the pages.)

Not everyone feels this way. When I commented to my fellow library lady last week that the book I was reading was "so sad! I'm like, an emotional wreck right now!" She just shook her head and said "You don't want to read something that makes you sad. You want something that makes you happy!" And while I found this a valid opinion, I sort of realized that sad books, in some weird way, do make me feel happy. Or, if not happy, then hopeful. Or maybe optimistic is a better word—as if I've gone on some sort of worthwhile emotional journey.

So what do you think, Dear Readers? Is there something to be gained from reading books that bring us to tears? Or do you find the whole idea a bit masochistic? Let me know in the comments!