The Last Book You'd Read Before Dying

What about it? I'm going to die soon from a brain tumor, so I don't have very long to live anyway. That's the main reason I'm going to Alaska, so I won't have to waste away or get surgery that will more than likely leave me without the ability to function in society.

My family is deeply religious and they've tried to get me to turn to God for help and guidance, I believe in the hopes to get me to go through the surgery to get the tumor removed. I just can't. I don't believe there's any higher power and this is the only life we get. What made you believe?

It would probably be something short, comfy, and full of melancholy:
Of Mice and Men
The Old Man and the Sea
The Dead

That sounds so nice, to feel at home and peace with a higher power. I feel at peace with my decisions, but I have lingering anxiety about being stopped before I can leave for Alaska. Or dying on the way there in a car crash or even a tornado or something bizarre and off the wall like that.
I never knew that about Thoreau. Thanks for the story.
+1 karma for you user

Of Mice and Men I can see being popular. Lenny dies at the end happy as a clam. But we and George see the other side of things, the real world, the cruelty and unfairness of it all. It's kathartic.

I would read Chika Sagawa`s collected works again. Or maybe Kafka on the shore or South of the border west of the sun. I know they are Murakami meme books but his books really impacted my life. After reading them I ended up getting into modern Japanese literature and then I wanted to learn Japanese after reading Mishima. Here I am a few years later living and working in Japan studying modern literature. The combination of kafkaesque situations plus Japanese traditional motifs, shinto symbolism, and Japanese 1920s surrealism totally changed my artistic preferences.
Chika sagawa actually died at the age of 23 from stomach cancer, I think one day I wish to die in Hokkaido in the snow under a tree in the late winter

I hope you get your peaceful end, user. I'm glad to hear you followed your interests and they led you to something good. I hope that I'll be able to find peace beneath a tree in Alaska with my favorite book and a bookmark of my daughter's picture. Someone recommended Seneca to me before I go. Would you recommend Sagawa? And if so, what works? I'll have some definite time to kill on the road while I take breaks to rest and relax so I'm not driving for sixteen hours a day.

only a collection of her poems were published after she died. here is a pdf of the english translation. There is a book on amazon of them and more, including her diary of the last week before she died. Really amazing stuff for me at least. The poem May Ribbon is my favorite
mokuroku.biwako.shiga-u.ac.jp/WP/No192.pdf

stupid
Cases in Comparative Politics

Are you going somewhere that you'll be able to see the northern lights? That's how I would want to go. Maybe finish my book during the day and watch the lights at night until my eyes shut.
I've never thought about my last book but it's an interesting question. The end of The Recognitions is nice and bittersweet but the rest of the book is probably too crushing. Siddhartha is rather uplifting at the end. Some other user mentioned The Dead, and Dubliners and Ulysses might be pretty basic answers for this place but I think both would be excellent choices. I have a lot of good memories with Ulysses.

There's a joke that comes to mind; a Christian in a storm falls overboard with his life vest but the vessel he was on didn't see it and didn't hear him in the storm so sailed away. He's floating there in the middle of all the chaos and another ship spots him. They shout at him that they can help him in but he replies "no thanks, it's ok, God will save me!" So they sail off. Another boat comes, the storm getting worse, it looks as though it's about to capsize too but so far remains upright, they tell him to grab their lifesaver so they can pull him onto the boat, but he denies, saying "no thanks, it's ok, God will save me!" The boat sails off for the nearest harbour they can find.

So the Christian drowns, and upon finding himself at the pearly gates before God, he asks "Lord, why didn't you save me?" God replies, "I sent you two boats!"

The schism between science and Christianity is very unfortunate, and I don't believe it's necessary for it to be there. After all, to my knowledge the majority of Nobel prize winners were Christian, and the majority of inventions of the past millennium were likely developed by Christians. It only makes statistical sense, considering the HUGE number of Christians there are in the world, not to mention the fact that pretty much all of the oldest Colleges and Universities were founded by Christians who sought to better understand this world that God had created. So if your story is true, it's ultimately up to you. You can turn to medicine and surgery if you think it offers the best chance of your survival, or you can turn to peace and prayer to hope for a more holistic cure, but it sounds like you're not going for either. It sounds like you've accepted your fate, more-or-less, whatever that fate should be.

I guess I could sum it up as don't be that guy at the pearly gates asking why God didn't save you, only to end up hearing Him say "have you SEEN all the medical shit I've provided you people over the centuries?! Take a hint!"

OP, for what it’s worth I have a friend who had a brain tumor. He had experimental surgery, not knowing if he would make it through the operation, but it worked and he was the first patient to successfully receive the procedure. If you’ve made your peace I won’t try to dissuade you, but if medical professionals are floating the idea of some sort of surgery I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand.
I hope you live your next few weeks to the fullest, regardless of what comes next.

I would re-read watership down. It has been my favourite book sinds childhood, extremely comfy. Can't think of a better book to end with since (spoiler) that book ends with death as well. Also sincei t made me fall in love with literature as a kid it would kind of be nice to come full circle and read it as my last.

God bless you, I'm sorry to hear your pain,

For me my last book would simply be what I was currently reading at the time. I don't like the idea of a "prepared" or "elegant" or "poetic" death. Somehow it strikes me as posing. I'd rather appear to be accosted in the middle of something.

Why put off the inevitable, just read a book, do something you couldn't get away with when alive and end it.

As I Lay Dying

It would be my journal, recording my thoughts as I explore a new place for the very last time.
I'm an ecologist you see.

Rimbaud Illuminatuon or Prometheus Unbound

Good post.

m-my diary... desu ;___;

What's that quote on the picture from?

Finnegans Wake, because I'd never finish.

Plato’s Phaedo. Knowing about the immortality of the soul can improve your soul’s conditions after its time in the body

Plato was just Christ's first visit to the earth, before the established canon of monotheism. He sowed seeds, though. Third time's the charm. *wink*

>goes out to Alaskan wilderness
>finally walking out in the snowy tundra with book wrapped in arm
>feeling a bit autistic by this point
>"brrrr... i need to find somewhere to sit..."
>find a black, icy log from a dead tree to sit on
>rub the snow off but ass gets all wet when sit down regardless
>"o-ok i guess i start reading now..."
>pull book out
>fumble awkwardly with the pages in bulky cold weather gloves
>snowdrops landing making the pages all damp
>starting to think this was a bad idea
>struggling to concentrate
>keep tearing soggy pages by accident
>trying to remember why i came out to this shithole in the first place
>this book doesn't seem very profound anyway
>i don't even think it's about Alaska

Unironically, I would reread the genre fiction and fanfictions I loved when I was a teenager. Death brings forth in me a desire to set myself in order. To do so imply remembering all of my good times. To tell me my time on earth had worthwhile personal moments.

The bible otherwise.

I can't say I understand your position, but my empathy goes to you. I hope you can find solace in the wild and in your last days. Stay stronk, user.

the tartar steppe. Fantastic book about facing death

This, i would probably read the fantasy books again which i read as a teenager when i really got into reading.

World as Will and Representation. I would like to go out with my man Schoppy.

Not sure if this should be your last book but you should read Into the Wild

>anons who say the Bible

ayyy, Jodorowsky is pretty good. A bit too bizarre for me to enjoy, but I appreciate his turning spaghetti westerns inside out. If you enjoyed that, you might also like Paris, Texas. stars Harry Dean Stanton. I love that movie, and most other Wim Wenders (Until The End of the World, City of Angels). And as long as we're talking /tv/, I'm rewatching Ken Burns The Civil War. The waste of life is incredible, but the sacrifice on both sides is heroic. Recommended.

Last book I would read before dying would be Plotinus' Enneads, because it convinced me to faith in God. And by God I mean an unknowable, a first principle that we can only surmise is highest (simplest, most ineffable) good. Especially this segment: phx-ult-lodge.org/The_beautiful.htm

Thanks for making good on your promise, OP. I was looking forward to you posting again.

underfuckingrated

+++++
Exactly what I thought

> tfw you will most likely die either being unable to read or die while halfway through a good book

Lord of the Rings

The thought of dying before finishing a book saddens me

LoTR is what i too would want to re-read. I remember my dad took me to watch LOTR: Fellowship of the ring, on the first day it came out in the cinema. And from then on as a child i fell in love.
A week later he came home from work with the triology set and i devoured them.
Tolkien's world is my "safe-place", i can pick up the book and remember my childhood and those moments i cherished so much.

I would also read: To kill a mockingbird (that book just evoked such a powerful feeling within me when I read it as a child).

OP god bless you, there is no right nor wrong book to do, just like there is no right nor wrong approach to dying. I wish for you tranquility of the mind and peace

user a week ago I asked you not to go through with this and I'll ask you again.
Please just breathe and live.
Get that surgery done don't throw everything away.

All the best, OP. I hope you go comfortably and peacefully.

I don't know what my last book would be to read, I probably don't have that kind of foresight to plan that way ahead. I think I would want something that left me feeling warm and comforted, appreciating life. I'd probably want to read Don Quixote or Les Miserables again if I had the time - those books made me feel very emotional and immensely appreciative of what I have in life.

I'm huge for films too so I would need a last film. I've always thought Kurosawa's Ikiru would be a nice way to go.

Please post another thread before you go sharing with us your last book.

The Bible, in Latin.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Maybe Anna Karenina too, to remind yourself that you'll die a hapless virgin.

Surely it would be Plato's Phaedo and Spinoza's Ethics. The two books which fill the soul with strength, peace and διkή the most. A philosopher dies happy and serene.

definitely Faust

>reading translations

If I could pick just one, Ulysses. I find joy in every page of Ulysses. Each page can make me go off on a tangent in my mind.

In Search of Lost Time is similar. If I had enough time to read a stack of books I'd pick Ulysses, ISOLT, TBK, and some short stories

it's what the pope does

>Implying Francis would ever celebrate a Latin mass

For me I'd have to say it'd be the original Mass Effect Trilogy of books, I know compared to some of the other choices of literature my choice seems pretty basic but those would be my ideal way to reminisce the summers I spent in my garden reading those books and listening to trees and the birds.

Also since having loved the whole science fiction genre since I was a boy re-reading that trilogy would be my ideal mental plane to return to reflect on my younger years of life.

He had a daughter nigger

from a depressed person who can't seem to believe in god: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Do as he did who know sits outside the gates of purgatory. Read the Phaedo

Don’t be like these guys though

I guess I’d read the dialogue Socrates had with his students before he drank poison and died. He argues why he doesn’t think death is the end.

>The Dead

I got upset all over again just reading that fucking title.

Where in AK are you planning on playing out the clock?

I'm taking a bottlefull of sedatives so I can just fall asleep reading. Alaska is great in the spring, cold yes, but not icy and forlorn.

OP here. My choice too is from my childhood. My daughter loved it too even though she couldn't understand many of the longer words.

I have no idea what it's from, but I like it. Your life may be entirely shielded from another's. You may pass by hundreds of moths in a day, perhaps thousands if you live in a city, and never realize that you are missing an act of someone's life being played out. You are glimpsing into someone else's life, but you are blind to it.
It's very thought-provoking for me.

Can I find Paris, Texas online easily? I don't have a lot of time between work and prep for Alaska, so if it's not easily accessible I may just have to skip it for another life, if there is one.
Interesting book choice. And you're welcome, user. Thank you for posting and contributing to the thread. It's a long road ahead, but at least I can carry the goodwill of my faceless comrades forward with me.

install qbittorrent. google tpb, feel lucky, click on a link, search for it by title. click on magnet link.

or purchase/rent from a streaming service. a*azon probably has it.

The Brothers Karamazov, without a doubt

bump for op.

Thanks user.
+1 karma for you

OP is still here. And he thanks you for your bump. Any idea what you'd read last in life though, just to stay on topic?

I really haven't thought about it. I'm waiting on my passport to get back so I can drive through Canada to get to Alaska by land. Taking the ferry just seems like too much of a hassle and I have an irrational fear of drowning, so land or air it is. Land is far cheaper and gives me the opportunity to go sightseeing across America before I leave on my last trek into the spring wilderness. I'll probably just drive until I hit the end of a road and then hoof it for a day or two with all my camping gear until I find a good spot. Camp for a night, enjoy the wilderness, the night, the freedom, then walk as far as I can into the wilderness in half a day, sit down, stuff as big a handful of sedatives into my mouth as I can, and read until I'm unconscious.
If any anons from the last thread are here, I'm thinking about ordering a stuffed deer toy to take with me and naming it Sunstag, in the same vein as Claire's favorite toy Starbuck. Thoughts on that?

I've already answered with Plotinus. But some of these answers are comfy af. Especially reading a childhood favorite like Tolkien; going off to Helm's Deep one last time, riding with the Rohirrim, and diminishing into the west. I'd be set.

thanks for the silver my man. have a song. youtube.com/watch?v=uZmxZThb084

oh man you need a passport? I thought you just had to tell customs you were driving up to Alaska. Taking the ALCAN highway? Freiburger and Finnegan took an old Ranchero up that way once, was fun to watch but I'd want a heater.

I was told and looked up that you need a passport, apparently you used to just be able to get by by the strength of your handshake and genuine word, but since the election in November apparently this isn't enough anymore. So I've heard, anyway.
I got a passport just to make sure. It should be here soonish, definitely within the next two weeks. I'll be set to go in a week and after that it will just be waiting for Claire's birthday so I can place some flowers on her grave, say my goodbyes, and head off for whatever waits for me across America.

As a side note, March 20th is Claire's birthday and I chose to leave for Alaska on that day because I am a sucker for lining things up for impact. It feels good to start the rest of my life on the same day hers started. Poetic, even though it's sort of not because it's so contrived. Even so, feels right in a way.
Glad to see you're still with me on Veeky Forums, user.

It wasn't from the election. That's been a thing since the 9/11 era. Also they won't let you in with a criminal record of any kind.

That's pretty steep.

Bumping for op

Bumping for OP +2

A significant thing that every human being has to do is to structure their psychological and emotional framework around the most fundamental fact of their life – their mortality. Only when you do this will you naturally become eligible for a spiritual process, to a dimension beyond the mundane. The nature of your logicalmindis such that it would like to eliminate death completely from its scope of thought. This is why most people are structuring their psychological process around a nonsensical idea of immortality – as if they are forever. Every day, there is no reminder in their thought that this is a limited amount of time and that you are just a baton carrier from the previous generation to the next. Right now, it takes a lifetime for people to understand that they are mortal. They need a heart attack or the appearance of a malignant lump somewhere to remind them.

Moby-Dick... or maybe just the chapter about queequeg getting sick.

>Knowing about the immortality of the soul can improve your soul’s conditions after its time in the body

>He thinks that's incorrect.

If I were in your shoes, whatever the most readily available literature on the kind of brain tumor I had happened to be.

In my case, I suppose it would probably be a tie between the Lost Songs of Merlin, since that is the book that ignited my passion for reading. Not so much because of the book itself, but because of how much I wanted to know more about the Arthurian legend, and where that search for knowledge led me into becoming someone who strives to be skeptical and analytical; or the first (and coincidentally last) story I ever wrote that I actually felt I completed.

Of course, that's assuming I could tear myself away from my family. I don't think I could do that. I might read with them, aloud, though. Especially if I chose the second option; reading aloud my 13 year-old self's idea of what good writing was to my wife and friends would be pretty great, especially considering it was 50% my trying to explain how multi-universes worked according to my understanding so I could justify the existence of a unified anime setting, and 50% a self-professed "emo" kid's unified anime setting with a 100% OC DONUT STEEL Gary Stu self-insert main character.

Honestly, probably a Harry Potter book, or the whole series if possible
I read through them all one summer when I was younger and that's what got me into reading. I've never been as captured by a book as I was then, I was totally in another world when I read through them. I'd read them every chance I could get, I think I finished one of the books in a day and a half.
I had this chapstick I used all the time while reading them, so now whenever I smell that scent I get taken back to it, I have such heavy nostalgia for that time.
I recognize now they're poorly written, and not the best books I've ever read, but in my last moments I'd want to read them. Just to try and take me back to that one summer

Bump

>There's a joke that comes to mind; a Christian in a storm falls overboard with his life vest but the vessel he was on didn't see it and didn't hear him in the storm so sailed away. He's floating there in the middle of all the chaos and another ship spots him. They shout at him that they can help him in but he replies "no thanks, it's ok, God will save me!" So they sail off. Another boat comes, the storm getting worse, it looks as though it's about to capsize too but so far remains upright, they tell him to grab their lifesaver so they can pull him onto the boat, but he denies, saying "no thanks, it's ok, God will save me!" The boat sails off for the nearest harbour they can find.

So the Christian drowns, and upon finding himself at the pearly gates before God, he asks "Lord, why didn't you save me?" God replies, "I sent you two boats!"

I love this story. Thanks for sharing.

I take this a re-readability question, which for me is an easy answer: Moby Dick.

Glad you enjoyed the story, can't remember where I'd heard it from but it stuck with me. I specialize in things that are a bit darker but anyways if you'd like more stories to read then you can check out the stuff I've self-published. Might be getting traditionally-published sometime, which would be AWESOME, we'll see what they think of my short story. What I've self-published are all novelette-novel length, pretty much. Anyways the link is below if you'd like to have a look. Quite a few of them are only 99 cents US. Most expensive one is $3.99 US but it's the fifth and most recent installment of my zombie survival series.

www.amazon.com/author/jnmorgan

I don't think I'll be able to see the Northern Lights. I haven't done a lot of research for the ranges you can see them at, but if I'm to understand what little I do know, there has to be a pretty specific set of circumstances for them to appear at all. That would be nice, but I doubt I will be able to.

OP here. I love that joke. My dad used to tell it with a ton of finesse and make it absolutely hilarious in his own way.
I don't see myself as some kind of fedora-tipping atheist. I just don't believe there is a higher power. That's not to say that I don't reserve judgment on whether or not one COULD exist. There are few absolutes and I am not absolutely sure there isn't a god out there. I may not believe, but absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. But you can make your own conclusions about how to run your life in the absence of evidence.
If there is a God and I do manage to get to the pearly gates, I don't think I'll care much about actually having died. I'll beg to tell my daughter how much I love her and that she was the greatest human being in my life. I miss her more than anything.

If God exists, then he is cruel. He may love us, but He is a very sadistic ruler. Not to trash Christians or religious people in general, but all the evidence points to a higher power being incapable of preventing evil and suffering or willingly perpetuating it for some reason. It still confuses me how people can say it was God's will for Claire to die at the age of four.

Damn, imagine being in that summit. The view and only the wind's sound would be amazing

Thanks. I'm glad your friend is doing well and things turned out alright for him. If I wasn't guaranteed to lose some brain function, I would probably have no issue with the surgery. If every single step were to go unrealistically well, then I'd be only marginally affected. However, there is around an 85% chance that if I got the surgery that I would be left with an IQ of something like 79, which is just unacceptable for me. Most of my higher-order thinking skills would be halved, if not reduced to almost non-functioning levels. I'm not willing to risk losing who I am without a good reason. My daughter Claire was that reason, the only one, really. With her death in September, I've really got nothing else to try for. I'd rather die understanding myself and the world and my circumstances than live possibly eighty more years as a mental child. That is not a life worth living.

I don't think life is about living it fully. You can fill your life with lots of things that don't make you happy, experiences you don't value. Living it well and enjoying it is key, I think, to living it at all. Doing what you like to, no matter how small or how grandiose, Thank you for your post. It made me gain a little more insight into myself.
+1 karma for you

Life is full of it. You learn from it and it shapes you. It allows you to produce the strength of character to shape yourself afterwards. Pain is essential to living and becoming a "good" person, whatever you may intemperate goodness as.
+1 karma for you.

I'd rather not be a cunt with my last earthly decision, to be quite honest. Causing people inconvenience or grief and them potentially having them watch me die is not dignified or reputable.

Interesting. I never thought of creating anything as my last action. That is actually pretty inspiring. Maybe I should create a visual record of my journey so when someone does eventually find me they'll at least have the path I followed into the end?

I won't live as half a man. I appreciate your concern, but just breathing and living isn't enough for me. The idea of becoming Charlie Gordon and knowing that I once was more than I am and that I will never be able to be that man again scares me terribly. It is probably one of my biggest fears in life after reading Flowers for Algernon. Right after the fear of drowning.

I don't consider myself to be throwing away anything. I would have gotten the surgery for Claire without a second thought to my own outcome, but now the board is set with different pieces. I will either die a slow and undignified death due to tumor growth crowding out my neural pathways and causing my brain to lose cohesion and processing power, or get surgery and be a stunted shadow of myself for the rest of what will probably be a long life.

I choose to die with dignity. On my own terms. In my own time. With my own decisions blazing the trail into whatever comes next. Life is not precious. Life is what you make of it. And I am going to make mine worthwhile, no matter how short it may end up being in the long run.
I'm going to drive to a place that I have had dreams about taking my former girlfriend and my daughter, explore the wilderness at the edge of the world, find a place I find suitable enough to die at, read my favorite book, and die as I please. I regret nothing. I will regret nothing when the time comes. I have chosen to make a decision for myself. Nobody can take that away from me. Not my family. Not my job. Not my state or government. Not even my brain tumor.