Have you ever read a book and reached a scene that was too intense for you to keep reading? I don’t mean intense action. What I mean is that the scene evokes an intense emotional response.
At the moment, the book I’m reading is nearing the end (finally!) and it’s gotten to a point when many things have come together and it’s an almost impossible situation to succeed. I’ve read books in the past in which a favourite character of mine has died in the final scenes, and I found it so intense that I had to put the book down for a while before I could continue. In a way, that’s the kind of feeling I’m getting now with this book. I want to know what happens, but I’m also afraid that one of my favourite characters is about to die.
I’m thinking about whether I should finish the book tonight or not. Or should I wait until tomorrow? I’ll see.
Have you felt this way before? Let me know in the comments. And please, no spoilers.
I Read Encyclopedias for Fun 
George Martin’s “Red Wedding”. I was so stunned I couldn’t continue. I think I even went back a few pages to reread it to make sure what I read actually happened.
That was quite the scene, yeah. It was spoiled for me when it was on the TV show, and I happened to read a news article that said what happened in the title. Can’t avoid that.
Which book is it?
The Neutronium Alchemist. I recovered quickly, though. Finished the book, too.
Cixin Liu’s ‘The Three-Body Problem’ did that for me, basically because a part of the plot takes place during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and it’s quite…dire. It evoked a feeling of ‘this couldn’t have possibly happened in real life’ but bothered me anyway, because I knew it actually did.
Yeah, sometimes I have trouble reading about past events that were horrifying, just because they actually happened, and I couldn’t imagine being there.
Yes, “All the Bright Places” was the first and only book that I had to put down because I was so overwhelmed
It’s pretty rare, isn’t it? Doesn’t happen often to me.