Last night I went to The Taiwan Beer Bar for Jeremy's birthday. Cheap beer. Then a couple more bars and celebrated Mickala's birthday. Happy birthday again to you both if you ever read this. The night ended with flaming absinthe and a vague memory of someone climbing a lapdancing pole and trying to touch the roof. It wasn't me.
Sum is the kind of book you can read easily in an afternoon. It's also the kind of book you won't put down, at least if, like me, you don't have much else to do.
Sum is forty short stories. Each one is easy on the absinthe addled mind, being concise, thoughtful, and thought provoking. Each story is a possible kind of afterlife, but rather than serious possibilities, I think Eagleman is largely commenting on our lives on Eartyh. In Circle of Friends, the afterlife includes only the people the character, dead bloke, whoever, remembers from his life. He becomes bored but no one has sympathy because these are the people he has chosen. In Prism, heaven includes a you for every age of your life, one, two, twenty-three, etc. The seperate you's don't get along very well because they have so little in common. Each story comments somehow on how we behave, how we think, or who we might be.
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