Book List 1: First 50 Mortality Books
With the first year of The Mortal Atheist Blog now in the rearview, I accomplished that original goal of reading 50 books about death/dying. Of course, my reading list has ballooned to something nearer to 150+ books still unread, but I wanted to take a moment to appreciate this milestone.
Here were my first 50 books (update: here’s my now list of 100!)
1. Being Mortal (Atul Gawande)
2. Mortality (Christopher Hitchens)
3. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (Caitlin Doughty)
4. The Five Invitations (Frank Ostaseski)
5. The Needs of the Dying (David Kessler)
6. A Year to Live (Stephen Levine)
7. Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing To Do With God (Greta Christina)
8. The Bright Hour (Nina Riggs)
9. The Consolations of Mortality (Andrew Stark)
10. The Welcome Visitor (Jarvis and Humphrys)
11. So Far So Good – Final Poems: 20142018 (Ursula K. Le Guin)
12. Lessons from the Dying (Rodney Smith)
13. Let’s Talk About Dying (Steve Gordon and Irene Kacandes)
14. Advice for Future Corpses (Sallie Tisdale)
15. Becoming Earth (Eva Saulitis)
16. On Death and Dying (Elisabeth KublerRoss)
17. Graceful Exits (Sushila Blackman)
18. Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart (Gordon Livingston)
19. The Denial of Death (Ernest Becker)
20. Dying: A Memoir (Cory Taylor)
21. The Worm at the Core (Sheldon Solomon et. al.)
22. How to be Sick (Toni Bernhard)
23. With the End in Mind: Dying, Death, and Wisdom in an Age of Denial (Kathryn Mannix)
26. Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization (Stephen Cave)
28. Nothing to be Frightened of (Julian Barnes)
29. Grief Workbook For Skeptics (Carol Fiore)
30. Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium (Carl Sagan)
31. Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? (Caitlin Doughty)
32. How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter (Sherwin Nuland)
33. Staring At The Sun (Irvin Yalom)
34. When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi)
35. We All Know How This Ends (Anna Lyons and Louise Winter)
36. Death (Todd May)
37. Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab (Christine Montross)
38. Die Wise (Stephen Jenkinson)
39. Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)
40. At The Existentialist Café (Sarah Bakewell)
41. The Myth of Sisyphus (Albert Camus)
42. The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories (Leo Tolsty)
43. Death and Philosophy (Edited by Jeff Malpas and Robert C. Solomon)
44. Who Says You’re Dead? Medical & Ethical Dilemmas for the Curious & Concerned
45. Natural Causes (Barbara Ehrenreich)
46. Wave (Sonali Deraniyagala)
47. Working Stiff (Judy Meliner)
48. The Epicurus Reader (Inwood, Gerson, Hutchinson)
49. From Here To Eternity: Traveling The World To Find The Good Death (Caitlin Doughty)
50. Dying Well: Peace and Possibilities at the End of Life (Ira Byock)
Despite devoting myself to the subject of death, no project has ever felt as life-affirming.
For those of you who aren’t keen to repeat my list in full, these are the five books that had the most profound effect on me this year:
Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization (Stephen Cave)
The Denial of Death (Ernest Becker)
The Worm at the Core (Sheldon Solomon et. al.)
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (Caitlin Doughty)
The next 50 books are lined up and ready to go!