Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David M. Eagleman: A review

What an odd little book this is. The book is only a little over 100 pages and in it the author presents different brief vignettes of our possible afterlives. Each imagined afterlife contains a deity, but each deity is different.

One deity is actually two - a dissatisfied married couple. Another is a microbe, too small for us to see. Others are dim-witted beings who created us to be smarter than they are. Another is too big to even be aware of us. Well, you get the idea of the diversity contained here, I think.

These short evocations of the afterlife (or afterlives) are sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes funny, and sometimes just plain weird, but taken altogether, they comprise an interesting book, one that I would never have picked up if my daughter, the librarian, hadn't recommended it to me.

Reading things outside our comfort zone is actually very good for us, I think. It is a way to stretch our minds in new directions. I know this book sent my mind running in all kinds of different directions that I would not have otherwise explored. Unknown territory FAR outside my comfort zone.

I felt a bit like Lewis or Clark headed off into the mysterious West and the characters I met were every bit as strange and exotic as the ones they met.

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