
Just a heads up: As of today, July 11, 2012, there are only 163 days left before the world ends. At least according to the ancient Mayan calendar, which will officially stop counting days on December 21, 2012, signifying, in the eyes of many paranoid loons and conspiracy theorists, the arrival of doomsday. Will the sky fall? Oceans flood our dry land? Fireballs pop through the soil like Whac-A-Mole heads? Worst of all, will we not be able to see Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained when it opens on Christmas Day? Oh, the horror!
If you’re anything like us, you’ve already started finalizing a bucket list and have immediate plans to begin knocking entries off in a mad dash to 12/21/12. Aside from having Kate Upton do the “Cat Daddy” dance in your bedroom, one of your top priorities should be to finally sit back, take a load off, and bask in the beauty and complexities of great literature—seriously.
Anyone who’s spent hours inside a Barnes & Noble knows how daunting it is to select the right books, though, which is why we here at Complex have decided to provide a diverse end-of-days literary list, a.k.a. 50 Books To Read Before You Die, one that’s been compiled from the personal libraries of each staff member.
Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone) and Ross Scarano (@RossScarano)
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No Country for Old Men

One Hundred Years of Solitude

A Wild Sheep Chase

Native Son

The Metamorphosis

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick

The Savage Detectives

Jesus' Son

Ghostwritten

The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

The Electric Michelangelo

If On a Winter's Night a Traveler

The Big Sleep

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Stories of Ray Bradbury

Haunted

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Flicker

Brave New World

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

The Intuitionist

I Am Legend

Books of Blood

The Haunting of Hill House

Lolita

The Notebook

The Stranger

A Clockwork Orange

Watchmen

The Fortress of Solitude

Lord of the Flies

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Catch-22

Frankenstein

House of Leaves

1984

The Great Gatsby

Earth Abides

The Shining

Heart of Darkness

Breakfast of Champions

The Things They Carried

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Wonder Boys

White Noise

Under the Volcano

I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere

The Divine Comedy
