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bklassen's review against another edition
funny
informative
medium-paced
3.0
If you have ever wanted a brief dive into how the afterlife is presented in cultures, religions, mythologies, and pop culture across the world, look no further. Admittedly, there are times I’d like more of an anthropologist’s take on these afterlives, like what their heaven, hell, or purgatory/limbo said about the writer, group of people, culture, etc. I’d love to learn what values that society holds or held at the time that resulted in such beliefs in their afterlives. Admittedly, that gets deeper in a way that is less peppy and needs to be presented sensitively.
Also, note to self: look up why so many afterlives involve or contain the number 9.
However, it is a fun way to get a sampling of the multitude of afterlives out there and how similar or different some are to each other, all presented with Ken Jenning’s snarky humor that genuinely made me laugh out loud sometimes.
justjordie's review
I enjoyed the writing style, and I can tell the author did a ton of research to be able to publish this book. The humor elements that were mixed in made it even more enjoyable. About halfway through it just got super redundant for me. I think it would be better as a reference book/coffee table book where you read a chapter or two at a time. Reading it consecutively all at once was boring for me. I really wanted to like it and finish it!!
ponch22's review against another edition
2.0
I probably should have just abandoned this, but a bit of sunk-cost fallacy kept me going to the end.
I've read almost everything Ken Jennings has written (confession, I used to play his weekly trivia and won enough times to get several signed copies of his books) but I've only really loved Brainiac Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs. When I heard about his latest book, 100 Places to See After You Die, I put in a couple of requests at my two libraries for physical or digital loans. Nothing was immediately available (I assume the librarians had to purchase copies?) and then I found a cheap-ish copy on bookshop.org back during Prime Day.
By the time my physical copy arrived & I was ready to read it, a digital copy had become available so I flipped back and forth for 2-3 weeks (I can't remember the length of this loan), reading a few pages here and there until the e-book had to be returned. Then a couple of long vacation car rides helped me finally finish the physical copy.
It was almost a fun read. I didn't find Jennings' humor to break through often enough. There are some clever moments, but they're often relegated to chapter supertitles. For example, the Hellscapes chapter dealing with Hieronymus Bosch has "What a Long, Strange Triptych" which is just like a super-nerdy pun that made me smile, but then the actual chapter itself is just a basic summary of Bosch's paintings dealing with the afterlife with some lame jokes about butts.
The book seemed to be too preoccupied on finding 100 different pop culture/historical views on the afterlife to give Jennings the title (which he sometimes called "101 Places to See...," which makes me wonder what one afterlife got cut during editing). Most places get a 2-page chapter summarizing said afterlife, while some sources get multiple chapters (e.g., Dante's The Divine Comedy gets three chapters for Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso; and Islam & Hinduism get two each for Jahannam & Jannah and Naraka & Vaikuntha, respectively) and one of Buddhism's three chapters is just a joke because beyond the title Nirvana, there is no chapter/summary (get it?)
As I said, after his first book Brainiac (which dove into his own journey through Jeopardy! and into a bunch of other competitive trivia leagues), most of his output has been diminishing returns for me. I'm not sure if he just has less proximity to these other topics and therefore the writing is colder, or maybe he's busy co-hosting Jeopardy! and doesn't have as much time to research the topics, but I just found it hard to be interested in much of anything presented here. Even the Travel Guide concept felt like a lazy tack-on with random "Traveller Tips" or extra Attractions/Must-Dos sometimes included amongst the general summaries.
Probably not going out of my way to keep my Jennings collection complete after this (unless of course I win another free copy somehow)...
I've read almost everything Ken Jennings has written (confession, I used to play his weekly trivia and won enough times to get several signed copies of his books) but I've only really loved Brainiac Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs. When I heard about his latest book, 100 Places to See After You Die, I put in a couple of requests at my two libraries for physical or digital loans. Nothing was immediately available (I assume the librarians had to purchase copies?) and then I found a cheap-ish copy on bookshop.org back during Prime Day.
By the time my physical copy arrived & I was ready to read it, a digital copy had become available so I flipped back and forth for 2-3 weeks (I can't remember the length of this loan), reading a few pages here and there until the e-book had to be returned. Then a couple of long vacation car rides helped me finally finish the physical copy.
It was almost a fun read. I didn't find Jennings' humor to break through often enough. There are some clever moments, but they're often relegated to chapter supertitles. For example, the Hellscapes chapter dealing with Hieronymus Bosch has "What a Long, Strange Triptych" which is just like a super-nerdy pun that made me smile, but then the actual chapter itself is just a basic summary of Bosch's paintings dealing with the afterlife with some lame jokes about butts.
The book seemed to be too preoccupied on finding 100 different pop culture/historical views on the afterlife to give Jennings the title (which he sometimes called "101 Places to See...," which makes me wonder what one afterlife got cut during editing). Most places get a 2-page chapter summarizing said afterlife, while some sources get multiple chapters (e.g., Dante's The Divine Comedy gets three chapters for Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso; and Islam & Hinduism get two each for Jahannam & Jannah and Naraka & Vaikuntha, respectively) and one of Buddhism's three chapters is just a joke because beyond the title Nirvana, there is no chapter/summary (get it?)
As I said, after his first book Brainiac (which dove into his own journey through Jeopardy! and into a bunch of other competitive trivia leagues), most of his output has been diminishing returns for me. I'm not sure if he just has less proximity to these other topics and therefore the writing is colder, or maybe he's busy co-hosting Jeopardy! and doesn't have as much time to research the topics, but I just found it hard to be interested in much of anything presented here. Even the Travel Guide concept felt like a lazy tack-on with random "Traveller Tips" or extra Attractions/Must-Dos sometimes included amongst the general summaries.
Probably not going out of my way to keep my Jennings collection complete after this (unless of course I win another free copy somehow)...