Books People Would Take to a Deserted Island (Real Answers)

What to Read When Stranded: 100 Desert Island Picks

It’s one of those hypothetical questions that reveals more than you expect: If you were stranded on a deserted island, what’s the one book you’d take? Some people get practical, reaching for survival manuals. Others go for soul food—poetry, philosophy, or a childhood favorite they could read a hundred times. And then there are those who… well, would rather bring something they could sell later.

Here are 100 real answers gathered from readers, travelers, and dreamers—along with the reasons behind them.

The Survivalists

For these folks, step one is staying alive long enough to enjoy a good story.

1. SAS Survival Handbook – John “Lofty” Wiseman’s classic, often called the “castaway Bible.”
2. The Ultimate Guide to U.S. Army Survival Skills, Tactics, and Techniques – Because you can’t MacGyver without knowing how.
3. When All Hell Breaks Loose – Cody Lundin’s wild and practical disaster manual.
4. The Doomsday Book of Medicine – For when you’re your own doctor.
5. The Forager’s Harvest – Identify and prepare edible plants before you eat something… regrettable.
6. Wilderness Survival for Dummies – Straight to the point.
7. Advanced Bushcraft – Dave Canterbury’s take on long-term comfort outdoors.
8. Peterson’s Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs – Nature’s pharmacy.
9. The Outward Bound Wilderness First-Aid Handbook – Because splinters happen.
10. Boatbuilding: A Complete Handbook of Wooden Boat Construction – For the ambitious escape artist.

The Escape Planners

These readers are not here for a decades-long tropical stay.

11. How to Build a Raft – For the impatient.
12. Complete Idiot’s Guide to Surviving Anything – “Anything” includes escape plans.
13. Building a Boat from Junk That Washes Up on the Beach – Optimism required.
14. Open Sea Navigation by the Sun and Stars – For when the GPS is a coconut.
15. How to Signal Rescuers from Your Desert Island – Step one: make it big enough for a satellite to see.

The Classics Crowd

If they’re going to be alone for years, they might as well keep good company.

16. Robinson Crusoe – Learn survival and enjoy the irony.
17. The Mysterious Island – Jules Verne’s ultimate castaway engineering fantasy.
18. The Complete Works of Shakespeare – Bottomless reread value.
19. The Bible – Spiritual sustenance and epic narrative.
20. War and Peace – A castaway could finally finish it.
21. The Odyssey – The original adventure homecoming story.
22. Don Quixote – Because tilting at palm trees is inevitable.

The Escapists

For these readers, fiction is the ultimate lifeline.

23. Dune – Frank Herbert’s political, sandy epic.
24. The Lord of the Rings – Long, detailed, and endlessly re-readable.
25. The Silmarillion – For Tolkien fans with infinite time to decipher the family trees.
26. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini’s moving tale of friendship and redemption.
27. The Alchemist – For the dreamers.
28. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – River wisdom for ocean surroundings.
29. Catch-22 – Gallows humor for dire circumstances.
30. 1984 – A love story in disguise.

The Philosophers & Thinkers

If you can’t leave the island, you can at least explore the mind.

31. Meditations – Marcus Aurelius’ stoic wisdom.
32. Tao Te Ching – Lao Tzu’s guide to going with the flow.
33. Being and Nothingness – Sartre’s deep dive into existence.
34. The Book of Five Rings – Miyamoto Musashi’s samurai strategy.
35. The Eight Diagrams – Ancient Chinese cosmology in a single book.

The Long-Form Loyalists

If it’s going to be one book, it better be enormous.

36. Oxford English Dictionary – Endless words, endless uses (shoes, kindling).
37. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations – 5,000 years of one-liners.
38. Wikipedia in Print – Technically cheating, but appealing.
39. Les Misérables – Complete, unabridged, and perfect for editing your own “condensed” version.
40. Remembrance of Things Past – Proust’s seven-volume meditation on memory.

The Sentimental Picks

Because comfort can be more important than practicality.

41. Harry Potter (All Volumes in One) – Familiar magic.
42. All Creatures Great and Small – James Herriot’s warmth and humor.
43. Istanbul – Orhan Pamuk’s portrait of nostalgia.
44. The Historian – Gothic mystery to keep the mind busy.
45. Flight Behavior – Kingsolver’s lyrical storytelling.

(And yes, the list goes on—through every mix of practical, romantic, whimsical, and downright mischievous picks. Some would bring diaries to write in. Some would take Dungeons & Dragons manuals to world-build their way through the solitude. A few would just choose the thickest book they could find for use as fuel.)

The Takeaway

This list proves there’s no single “right” desert island book—just the one that fits your priorities. Do you want to survive? Escape? Reflect? Or simply curl up in a hammock and get lost in an epic?

Whatever your choice, it says something about you. And maybe that’s the real point—imagining ourselves on that sandy shore with a single book in hand forces us to decide what matters most when everything else is stripped away.

So, what would you pack?