Thought experiment. Say you found out your condition is terminal. You want to drive way out in nature as far from people as possible. Then you hike out another day to find a stream or lake even further from anyone to camp set up a chair for the next morning. What book would you take to wake and read non stop to finish in one day before you close it and take one last peaceful look at the world before ending your story permanently?
by StruggleBusDriver83
6 Comments
The Little Prince or Flowers for Algernon
I’ve been trying to answer that question for 30 years myself.
It used to be horror. I used to see the world through a lens that could only be appeased by darkness. It was all I had and so it was all I wanted to experience.
Then it was Fantasy. Living in a world fuelled by drugs and experience. The newer the better, the more unusual the better.
Then it was scifi. I found myself trying to look forward. Trying to see something beyond myself and my predicaments. Trying to see the place as a cohesive whole instead of a dissociative hole.
Then I couldn’t be bothered to think about what book to bring into the woods with me, for what seemed a very long time. Years passed before I even considered it again.
When I finally did consider it again I realized that I was living in the country, growing and making my own food, living by my principles instead of what the world tells me to live by.
So I guess my answer is a book about how to set up a self sustaining, off grid living. But my answer is not to end things after I read it. But instead to transform my life.
I’ll leave you with my favourite quote: “Are you willing to be sponged out? Cancelled? Made nothing? Are you willing to be made nothing? Dipped into oblivion? If not, you will never really change. D.H. Lawrence
Bell Jar. It’s my favorite novel, reads quick and easy, good to read on the way out.
Traveling cat chronicles by Hiro Arikawa. It’s been a minute since I’ve read it, but I remember it being a sweet and meditative book on what’s important in life, including thoughts on death that I found cozy.
Stoner. A perfect novel that I could finish in a day.
it would have to be shiver by maggie Stiefvater. it’s not profound.
my grandma and i always sat in her screened in porch and read books separately but together. usually she read a magazine and i read whatever YA book i was reading. shiver was th last book before she died and it was raining and peaceful. it was carpeted with old wire furniture and smelled musty and rusty when it rained. she had beautiful plants outside with giant leaves and the rain slid off of them so nicely.
i just kept my copy and i read it when i miss her. if i was going to die and i had to choose a book to send me off i would choose that one.