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Loading... Sum: Tales from the Afterlives (original 2009; edition 2010)by David Eagleman
Work InformationSum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman (2009)
   No current Talk conversations about this book.  yates9 | Feb 28, 2024 |   'You spend two months driving the street in front of your house, seven months having sex. You sleep for thirty years without opening your eyes.' These stories are poignant comments on facets of life that we perhaps take for granted or see too banally, Eagleman is very astute and inventive and he constantly delivers satisfying twists or sentences that hit you with a pithy revelation or reminder. It is a strong short story collection which encourages reflection on what really could be waiting for us (if anything) in a life after this. (  ) Dzaowan | Feb 15, 2024 | ) blueskygreentrees | Jul 30, 2023 |  ) talalsyed | Jul 22, 2023 | A lot of the stories seemed throwaway-ish, but there are also those which can be a starting point for further contemplation. Nothing revolutionary but still neat. Some of the stories I liked: Metamorphosis, Mary, Circle of Friends, Mirrors, Subjunctive (  ) kahell | May 12, 2022 |
 Eagleman will find Sum a hard act to follow. This delightful, thought-provoking little collection belongs to that category of strange, unclassifiable books that will haunt the reader long after the last page has been turned. This stunningly original book is little more than a 100 pages long. You can get through it in an hour, but you'd be mad to hurry, and you will certainly want to return to it many times. The "sum" of the title is from Descartes's "Cogito ergo sum". Its subject, as vast as the book is small, is what happens when the "Am" becomes "Amn't", the zero-sum game called death. In 40 luminous parables, David Eagleman offers meticulously itemised, plausibly fantastic scenarios of what the afterlife may comprise. The best stories in Sum remind us that it is natural to want to know our place in the scheme of things. The book is a scripture of sorts, but because each myth contradicts the last, it is not a dogmatic collection.  Yet while Mr. Eagleman squeezes from his tales a trite message about life, his many passing observations -- especially those concerning time and space -- convey sharp insights about how we think about death.
At once funny, wistful and unsettling, Sum is a dazzling exploration of unexpected afterlives--each presented as a vignette that offers a stunning lens through which to see ourselves in the here and now. In one afterlife, you may find that God is the size of a microbe and unaware of your existence. In another version, you work as a background character in other people's dreams. Or you may find that God is a married couple, or that the universe is running backward, or that you are forced to live out your afterlife with annoying versions of who you could have been. With a probing imagination and deep understanding of the human condition, acclaimed neuroscientist David Eagleman offers wonderfully imagined tales that shine a brilliant light on the here and now. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.01)
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