I want to keep a book aside as the last book I’m going to read when I’m very, very old.
Buddhist monks are read a mindfulness manual—Satipattana sutta by their caregivers. It is said to make your last moments peaceful.
I feel like that’s such a personal choice as to what you’d like your final thoughts to be. I, “funny” enough, was just talking to a friend with terminal cancer about what they’re reading yesterday. It was “The Once and Future King,” a childhood favorite. Nostolgia aside, they love the sweet tragedy of the story, the silly and earnest warmth of it.
For me, maybe something like the Doadejing or Siddhartha, something reassuring that life had been good and that a peaceful end is the best outcome to a well-lived life.
The far side comic collection
Allegedly Shakespeare said not to see King Lear until you’re old. It’s pretty brutal. I recommend it sooner.
Irvyn Yalom - Staring at the Sun
Look to Windward by Iain M Banks.
Whatever book you remember reading first, read it again at the end.
Well… My first book was Harry Potter T-T
But I guess I could read the book I read after that series
The Road.
By the time you finish it, you’ll be glad you’re almost dead.
Read Bladerunner because you will spend your last days wondering whether Rick is a replicant or not.
There’s a book like that? I thought it was a movie or game or something
I don’t have a real recommendation, I just want to say that I think this is a bad idea; What if the highly recommended book turns out to be one you find mindnumbingly boring and/or stupid? I can see this working if it’s the last book in a series you already like, but otherwise it’s risky.
Read what you want, and don’t hesitate.
Also, phonebook.
HHGTTG, Les Miserables or Don Quixote.
I wouldn’t wait to read something I actually want to read, because life and death is unpredictable.
I would rather plan to reread a book at different stages of life and find out how much I’ve changed by how differently feel about the same story.
Or I’d (re)read something like House of Leaves, just because it’d be very funny to have that type of book be the thing that finally kills me.
My mother may have been a bitch, but she had this down pat - she re-read her favourite books once she hit 80, and then gave them to charity after.
It helped clear down the house a bit and she enjoyed them one last time.
She dropped dead randomly at 87 with zero warning (other than being old).
Depends what you’re interested in?
Poetry, I would suggest quite a few poets. If I had to pick one it would the French Paul Eluard… which is not even the greatest poet in my opinion, just the one I first fell in love with as a young reader. If not him I would pick Baudelaire (another French poet) or maybe René Char. In English this time, the amazing Emily Dickinson. Those wrote verses I would love to read one last time when time comes.
Philosophy? Here again it all depends the languages you can read. Spinoza, Nietzsche, Plato, Aristotle. a few selected pages from Marx. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Diderot are way too often not read by too many people that so poorly speak of them and their ideas. Which is kinda sad but also very telling our days. I would consider re-reading Emmanuel Levinas.
Spirituality? I mean, the New Testament is a great text whether you believe in a god or not. So is Marcus Aurelius, or Saint Augustin.
Novels? Tolstoy ‘War and Peace’ and his ‘Anna Karenina’ (the best novel that was ever written), or my dear Flaubert ‘Madame Bovary’ (or his “La tentation de Saint Antoine”), Marcel Proust “A la recherche du temps perdu” (but here one would need to die real slow to be able to read it from start to finish ;)
Plays? The complete work of Molière, which is still the best playwright ever along with Racine, Shakespeare and the Ancient Greeks.
Or maybe get a taste of the root of all Western literature? Read Homer. Or a personal lifelong companion of mine: Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’, a book that quite literally…metamorphosed my life.
Or maybe some comics? Watterson’s “Calvin & Hobbes” would be my first pick. Then some Asterix (from the time their original creators were both alive, not their modern reboots)
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. It’s a farewell and reflection on his life as he faces his inevitable death from cancer. It’s beautiful and sad and insightful
There’s no way I’ll want to read heavy shit when I’m already staring down the barrel of mortality. I’m going for some YA pulp nonsense that I can clown on with my contemporaries. maybe the Twilight saga.
