RandomAnthony's Reviews > Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

In the afterlife you discover that all the goodreaders are in the same walled-off section of heaven. God greets you in the form of your ideal librarian. In the goodreads heaven library you witness the librarian gamut: examples include a fatherly professor, a stern but gentle middle-aged woman, and a supermodel in a plaid skirt with legs that won’t quit. If you are a seventeen year old girl God is a combination of Ben Harrison and that guy from 500 Days of Summer.

The more time you spent on goodreads the more status you have in heaven. When you first arrive God checks the library computer (there are never lines, as everyone’s different version of God has his/her own computer) and gives you a badge that displays your total hours logged onto goodreads. If you have logged many hours God shakes your hand, high-fives you, or blows you kisses. The people with the most time on their badges (these badges are gold) get the best tables at the goodreads heaven coffee shop and pick what the book clubs read. Ginny Jones is the coffee shop waitress but is never allowed to read any books. If you were involved in any goodreads fights, or ever deleted your profile, God wags his/her finger at you and makes you apologize to all involved parties. If the fight was especially egregious God makes you hug. In goodreads heaven you always look like your favorite avatar picture. In goodreads heaven you can always find your favorite place to read, whether it’s on the subway, your childhood bedroom, or the library’s corner chair. In goodreads heaven your favorite characters come to life. Many of the women goodreaders are walking around with men who look suspiciously like Jamie from Outlander.

The heaven goodreaders voted and decided that books should continue to have tangible form. They liked the smell of old pages, the feel of a trade paperback, and the sense of anticipation accompanying the moment when the librarian hands over your reserve order. Some dissenters lobbied that readers should only have to touch a cover to absorb a book’s contents, but just about everyone else said that was cheating. The dissenters were especially upset because they felt like everyone else had read Coetzee and Murakami and they wanted to catch up, but the majority ruled against them.

In goodreads heaven friend whores are in trouble. They are required to take every friend to dinner and listen to them talk for at least an hour. This was a reasonable punishment for those who wanted to pad their friends list, but God soon realized that this allowed creepy guys who only friended women the opportunity to talk with these women face to face. In turn these girl collectors can only talk with each other. They share tales of the best pics and attempt to interact with cute goodreaders but discover that, as if they were ghosts, no one but other girl collectors can see them.

In Goodreads heaven you meet David Eagleman, the author of Sum. You tell him you liked his book, for the most part, but wonder if he realizes that he stole “Graveyard of the Gods” from Neil Gaiman (Mr. Gaiman doesn’t have time to worry about this because goodreaders are chasing him all over heaven) and that some of the forty themes (e.g. heaven is so boring it’s hell, people get sick of immortality and volunteer for suicide) have been done before. You tell him some of his vignettes (“Mirrors”) are moving, while others (“Death Switch”) are funny and still more (“Blueprint”) thoughtful. You thank him for expanding consideration of the afterlife beyond our limited western hemisphere mindset. You admit that Sum didn’t rock your world but add that a few of your goodreads friends loved his book. He seems distracted and questions when he’ll meet these people. You also ask where you can find his publisher, since this book (which you got from the library, of course) lists for twenty bucks but takes less time to read than People magazine’s “best dressed” issue (not that, uh, you ever wasted a minute on magazines back on earth, of course not). Eagleman shrugs and walks off. Then you see your librarian with the next book on your reserve list. You blink to your perfect reading spot. You sip from a cup of coffee, all the time in the world, and open to the first page.