Sum
In the afterlife you may find that God is the size of a microbe and unaware of your existence. Or you may find the afterlife contains only those people whom you remember. In some afterlives you are split into all your different ages, in some you are recreated based on your credit card records, and in others you are forced to live with annoying versions of yourself that represent what you could have been. In these wonderfully imagined tales - at once funny, wistful and unsettling - Eagleman kicks over the chessboard of traditional notions and offers us a dazzling lens through which to see ourselves here and now. His stories are rooted in science and romance and awe at our mysterious existence: a mixture of hope, love and death that cuts through human nature at innovative angles.
Stats for nerds
7recommend
9mentions
9people
2010–2025years
78% recommend22% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Sivers' list has introduced me to many great books. I can recommend "Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives - by David Eagleman" which is the fourth book on the page you linked.
- +1 for Exhalation by Ted Chiang. And also: "Sum - Forty Tales from the afterlives" by David Eagleman. A small book that makes you think very very deeply.
- I have quite enjoyed a couple of books by David Eagleman: The Brain, and Sum.
- You’d probably enjoy David Eagleman’s book Incognito and also maybe his quirky book of short stories Sum.
- Here's a few of my favorites I read this year:
1. Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman
2. Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman
3. Developing a Universal Religion by David Hockey
4. Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
- Of the twenty-three books I read in 2010, these seven really stand out:
- Predictably Irrational. Everyone here knows this book, right? It had been on my reading list for too long, and I'm glad I eventually managed to read it. Much more enjoyable that I expected it to be, even given the fact that much of the material is well-known already. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational
- Longitude follows John Harrison's fascinating, painful and lengthy quest to win the Longitude Prize by creating a clock that was accurate enough to determine longitude at sea. Dava Sobel is a great writer and makes this topic totally engaging (aside: Sobel started her writing career as a technical writer at IBM). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_(book)
- Bad Science is Ben Goldacre's essential and extensive criticism of the media's health care reportage and of various health-related issues (vaccinations, placebos, etc.). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Science_(book)
- Sum has had a fair bit of press over the last few months. It's a collection of forty stories on the afterlife, by David Eagleman. It's a novel exercise in philosophy, and I thoroughly enjoyed five or six of the stories. It's a very creative and original book (and short, too) and is a good lesson in constrained thinking.
- The PayPal Wars is the story of PayPal's early years from the viewpoint of former PayPal marketing executive, Eric Jackson. I found it a riveting read on the trials and tribulations of a startup in a difficult market. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_PayPal_Wars
- Made to Stick is interesting in many ways (such as marketing, psychology and rhetoric, to name a few) and is extremely well-written. Chip and Dan Heath really know their subject and explain how to make ideas or concepts memorable in this captivating book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_to_Stick Tip: Read the extensive excerpts on the official website — http://www.madetostick.com/excerpts/ — and, if you enjoy them, read the full book.
- Lolita is one of those books everyone knows about, even if they haven't read it. I decided to sit down with this beast of a book and am glad I did. It's a great story and will really get your moral cogs ticking over. As well as that, Nabokov has an amazing way with the English language, and from very near the beginning I become a lifelong fan of his style. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita
