What book would you recommend to a person in their final days?

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.

You want to save a book you want to read till you're super old?

Accidents happen...

If you want to read a book, read the book. Don't plan to read it in 20-60 years

If you're planning a suicide there are people out there to talk to:

https://therecover.com/suicide-hotline-numbers-by-country/

If not, don't waste the book by waiting

I've heard On the Beach by Nevil Shute is an interesting read. It's definitely on my to read list for sometime in the future. If you're already basically on death's door and gonna be gone soon, there won't be much time to get depressed over a depressing book about people in Australia awaiting radiation from nuclear world war slowly making it's way over to the last habitable place on the planet.

Edit:

As for books I have read, Fourteen Days, apparently by a collaboration of many authors, including Margaret Atwood. The caviat is I got most way through but didn't finish it in time before having to turn it back into the library. Follows a woman whose dad worked as basically a maintenance type person for those apartment buildings in New York. She ends up becoming one herself out of need for money while her dad stays in a care facility. COVID hits as she's starting, so she's in lockdown along with the other tenants. Throughout, they all start gathering on a rooftop every night ( even though they're not supposed to ) as the main character records what happens to basically eventually put it into a journal from the person who had her job before her.

That is all I will say on it.

Tuesdays with Morrie. It gives a great perspective on how to have a positive outlook on life, even in its final days!

The very first book in The Wandering Inn series. You cant die until you finish it.

Immortality unlocked.

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.

If it's a book, and it's in 20-70 years from now, maybe Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. By then, those books will probably read as a history and you can marvel at Octavia Butler's prescience.

---

Im going to deviate slightly. I'd say the last film I want to see is Synecodoche, NY. I hope that, on reflection, my life's work is as grand as that of PSH's character in the film.

I just hope that, despite the work, I get out more often.

I'd read an encyclopedia of the history of my lifetime to remember things I might have forgotten.

That and a photo album of my life.

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

Irvyn Yalom - Staring at the Sun

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)

Allegedly Shakespeare said not to see King Lear until you’re old. It’s pretty brutal. I recommend it sooner.

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.

Something lighthearted and not depressing. Anne of Green Gables

HHGTTG, Les Miserables or Don Quixote.

The far side comic collection

The Road.

By the time you finish it, you’ll be glad you’re almost dead.

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.

Look to Windward by Iain M Banks.

well, the best book I've EVER read was Abandoned by Anya Peters. So sad. I'm glad she came through okay and lived a better life.

Respectfully, how do you know your mind will start to fail after your body? If you keep avoiding not reading that book, your odds of permanently depriving yourself of it continue to increase... Read the book, discuss it with your loved ones.

Whatever book you remember reading first, read it again at the end.

Read Bladerunner because you will spend your last days wondering whether Rick is a replicant or not.

Daytripper by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moone

I heard an owl call my name

Tuesdays with Morrie. One of my favorite books.

The Giving Tree

Old man and the sea

Personally I'd recommend the Quran. Although I wouldn't recommend delaying reading it.