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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
I absolutely loved most of the stories in the first half of the book, after that it was pretty hit or miss.
I devoured this. Will be rereading and will write a proper review then.
Rating: I liked it
Reto Pecera 2020: Colección de 20 relatos
Radom Pick April 2020
Sum is the collection of 40 tales about the afterlife, that imagines 40 totally different versions of it.
It was very interesting and creative and I think you could find one or more that makes you wonder and get your imagination running. It has interesting ideas, it's clever and short.
I recommend it.
This were the ones that I liked the most
The unnatural
This one is about people achieve live in eternity but then got tired of that and people began to commit suicide and make patties farewell parties so then and that became a natural again
Death switch
People created that switches because people were dying passwords were lost they establish a system where you have to input your passport weekly if you fail to put your password second pewter will send the password to the personal stylist to be your next in command of designated people but then people started to use the system to send farewells to say to people things they wouldn't say when they were alive and that went on. People got creative and started to send inside jokes a.m. saying happy birthdays and send a program messages like they were alive. When the time came and they were any they wouldn't any people alive the messages remain.
"we Are quite Satisfied With this arrangement because reminiscing about our glory days of existence is perhaps all that would have happened in an afterlife anyway"
Narcissus
Idon't really like this one specially but I liked its ending.
In this one people are cameras created by cartographers aliens that want to chart earth. The afterlife is where they download all the data; the problem is, instead of getting useful data they only get images of other people, indoors places, etc.
"Day after day, with sinking hearts, the cartographers scroll through endless reels of useless data. The head engineer is fired. He has created an
engineering marvel that only takes pictures of itself"
Subjunctive
In the after life you are a judge not against other people but against yourself, what you could have been, so is like the present world, but it includes all the yous that could have been.
So you feel jealous of the better yous, those that made better decisions, and you can't stand the lesser yous, that made worst decisions.
"You grudgingly befriend some of the lesser yous and go drinking with them. Eveb at the bar you see the better yous, buying rounds for their friends, celebrating the latest good choice. And thus your punishment is clearly an automatically regulated in the afterlife: the more you fall short of your potential, the more of these annoying selves you are forced to deal with."
Reversal
Instead of an afterlife, when we die we start again but in reversal. You think that this time around, living backward you could really understand live, but you discover that somethings didn't happen as you remembered them, "On the way back, the cloth of that story line unravels. Reversing through the corridors of your life, you are a battered and bruised in the collisions between reminiscence and reality. By the time you enter the womb again, you understand as a little about yourself as you did your first time here."
Reto Pecera 2020: Colección de 20 relatos
Radom Pick April 2020
Sum is the collection of 40 tales about the afterlife, that imagines 40 totally different versions of it.
It was very interesting and creative and I think you could find one or more that makes you wonder and get your imagination running. It has interesting ideas, it's clever and short.
I recommend it.
This were the ones that I liked the most
The unnatural
This one is about people achieve live in eternity but then got tired of that and people began to commit suicide and make patties farewell parties so then and that became a natural again
Death switch
People created that switches because people were dying passwords were lost they establish a system where you have to input your passport weekly if you fail to put your password second pewter will send the password to the personal stylist to be your next in command of designated people but then people started to use the system to send farewells to say to people things they wouldn't say when they were alive and that went on. People got creative and started to send inside jokes a.m. saying happy birthdays and send a program messages like they were alive. When the time came and they were any they wouldn't any people alive the messages remain.
"we Are quite Satisfied With this arrangement because reminiscing about our glory days of existence is perhaps all that would have happened in an afterlife anyway"
Narcissus
Idon't really like this one specially but I liked its ending.
In this one people are cameras created by cartographers aliens that want to chart earth. The afterlife is where they download all the data; the problem is, instead of getting useful data they only get images of other people, indoors places, etc.
"Day after day, with sinking hearts, the cartographers scroll through endless reels of useless data. The head engineer is fired. He has created an
engineering marvel that only takes pictures of itself"
Subjunctive
In the after life you are a judge not against other people but against yourself, what you could have been, so is like the present world, but it includes all the yous that could have been.
So you feel jealous of the better yous, those that made better decisions, and you can't stand the lesser yous, that made worst decisions.
"You grudgingly befriend some of the lesser yous and go drinking with them. Eveb at the bar you see the better yous, buying rounds for their friends, celebrating the latest good choice. And thus your punishment is clearly an automatically regulated in the afterlife: the more you fall short of your potential, the more of these annoying selves you are forced to deal with."
Reversal
Instead of an afterlife, when we die we start again but in reversal. You think that this time around, living backward you could really understand live, but you discover that somethings didn't happen as you remembered them, "On the way back, the cloth of that story line unravels. Reversing through the corridors of your life, you are a battered and bruised in the collisions between reminiscence and reality. By the time you enter the womb again, you understand as a little about yourself as you did your first time here."
Interesting thought experiments but not well fleshed out. This book goes in 40 different directions that could all be interesting but it feels like you're being given sketches rather than a fleshed out idea.
Excellent coffee shop reading. Thought-proking, but not taxing.
So hard to pick a favorite. I read Mary several times and think I will share Sum with the readers I know.
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This was good for, oh, the first 20 minutes. A few clever, thoughtful, and funny vignettes. I am attracted to the idea of an afterlife where one lives one's own life backwards. And to the one where one spends time with one's alternative selves, the one that finished graduate school, the one that didn't quit that job, etc. But the concept -- nice at first -- grew old quickly.
Just reread this book as our reading group is discussing it tonight. I think this is a great book, so many interesting and intriguing ideas. It’s very thought provoking. It may sound morbid being about what might happen when we die but it’s really not; I think it’s more about life than death. It’s got a great cover too with a cut out door!
At the end of this 110 page book, I was seriously beginning to resent the time it asked of me.