This week’s question at the Booking Through Thursday site is:

You’ve just reached the end of a book . . . what do you do now? Savor and muse over the book? Dive right into the next one? Go take the dog for a walk, the kids to the park, before even thinking about the next book you’re going to read? What?

(Obviously, there can be more than one answer, here–a book with a cliff-hanger is going to engender different reactions than a serene, stand-alone, but you get the idea!)

Many years ago, my good friend Judy and I came up with several criteria that had to be met in order for books to make it to our own, self-designed “Books That Make You Weep” list. Now these weren’t books that literally caused us to cry, although in some instances that was the case. But they were books in which the writing and stories were so strong, good, even beautiful, that they made us gasp in awe and enjoyment as we read. Then, when we reached the end, our immediate reaction had to be that all we wanted to do was turn back to the first page and start reading all over again, they were that good. The story had to resonate, staying with us for a very long time after we’d finally put the book down and gone on to another. These are the books that are then added to a permanent list of all-time favourites. I find I regularly go back and reread these - and they never fail to satisfy upon a second, third, or even a fourth reading. I find myself still gasping at the sheer brilliance of the writing and the way the stories are put together. Unfortunately, I haven’t read anything recently that has struck me in the same way that these books did in the past. But I continue to search and will add more titles as I find new books that make me weep from the pure enjoyment of reading them. Here’s my list (in no particular order):

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Independence Day by Richard Ford
English Creek by Ivan Doig
Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig
An Equal Music by Vikram Seth
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
Querencia by Stephen Bodio
Blueback: A Cotemporary Fable by Tim Winton
Abra by Joan Barfoot
How to Be Good by Nick Hornby
Losing Julia by Jonathan Hull
Fredy Neptune: A Novel in Verse by Les Murray
Mrs. Bridge by Evan S.Connell
Mr. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
Who Has Seen the Wind by W.O. Mitchell
Atonement by Ian McEwan

(Interestingly, one woman, and a Canadian at that, among all those men…)