I picked up this book at Highgate Bookshop, and I think there is not a more apt place for me to have stumbled upon it. 
The Book Against Death is part memoir, part philosophy, part journal, part poetry, part novel. It chronicles almost 60 years of Canetti’s life, rather fittingly up to his death. These notes and ponderings explore not only death but love, nature, birth, love, war, history, memory, literature, morality, duty and hope. Canetti quotes, imagines other forms of living, and tells of his own history in what is almost a published commonplace book. He battles with his own obsession with death, whilst simultaneously criticising those with morbid obsessions. The ups and downs and contradictions of this book perfectly epitomise the weird relationship we humans have with death. 
I loved this book in such a distinct way, I felt so much of what Canetti wrote and felt quite deeply. My copy has become a bit battered over the last couple of weeks as it has accompanied me to work, on bus journeys, on outings, in the bath, and on one particularly memorable trip to the cemetery. The beauty of this book lies in its unresolvedness. I hope that in his last moments Canetti was able to face death in the way he intended to, or even came to accept it in the way he so fought against. This book about death is so ferverently life affirming.