29. Saddest character death OR best/most satisfying character death (or both!)How about the saddest?
That would be Sherlock Holmes...it seemed so real, almost as if a real person had died. I was a serious little girl, who never cried over books at that age; but nonetheless, I was pretty heartbroken.
Another sad death was that of you-know-who in A Tale of Two Cities; it was especially intense since I didn't see it coming. Then there were the two deaths (SPOILER IN WHITE: Boromir and Gandalf) in The Fellowship of the Ring, and two of my favorite characters (Gandalf and Frodo) virtually dying at the end of The Return of the King. Nobody writes death scenes like Tolkien, that's for sure.
30. The End: do you prefer everything tied up or to be able to 'make up your own mind'? What is the worst ending to a book you have read? And the best? (careful, spoiler tags!)Generally, I prefer complete endings that leave no more questions, as in Jane Eyre and Bleak House; but on the other hand, I love the bittersweet, ambiguous ending of Eugene Onegin, which leaves the characters' futures up to the reader to decide (and interpretations, from what I've heard, vary drastically). It's such a perfect ending for that story, full of "poetic justice" but not engraved-in-stone.
Probably the absolutely worst ending I ever read was in Johnny Tremain, which ends *right before* he enters the battle. It doesn't even tell whether he "gets the girl" (who isn't that nice anyway). So annoying. Romeo and Juliet had a terrible ending, too--not even romantic. Moby-Dick...well, it has one of those excellent endings that you hate. It completes the story with a dose of realism, but I think it's tragic that (Starbuck) died.
Apart from Eugene Onegin and A Tale of Two Cities, I can think of at least two other books with outstanding endings: The Lord of the Rings and Kidnapped. Both are real tearjerkers. SPOILER: Nobody exactly dies...in Kidnapped, the journey ends and Alan has to go into hiding again; in LOTR, Frodo and Gandalf (the characters who began the story) both leave to go to the Undying Lands (fictional parallel to Heaven)...Gandalf, because "his work is done", and Frodo, because he is physically and emotionally dying from his battle with the Ring. But they're not just sad for melodrama's sake...Kidnapped's ending is about how "life goes on", and LOTR reminds you that, in the real world, happy endings come at a price for those who make them happen. I guess the ideal book ending, to me, is "bittersweetly ever after".
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