Dave-El's Book Report: 100 Places to See After You Die by Ken Jennings

It’s time for another edition of DAVE-EL’S BOOK REPORT where I REPORT on a BOOK that I (DAVE-EL) have read.

 

Everybody got that?

 

Anyway…

 

After two editions in a row that focused on graphic novels by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, I promised the next report would be on a book-book.

 

That book is 100 Places to See After You Die: A Travel Guide to the Afterlife written by Ken Jennings.   

 Yes, the undisputed Greatest of All Time champion and current host of Jeopardy, that Ken Jennings.   

 

What we have in this book is an amusingly told but thoroughly researched guide to various concepts of the afterlife as posited by various religions, mythologies, books, movies and TV shows. 

 

From Star Trek, want to know more about the Klingon version of the afterlife known as Stovokor? Ken’s got you covered. 

 

While I describe the book at “thoroughly researched”, at only 2 or 3 pages per afterlife, this book is by no means a deep dive into the minutia of these concepts.  Still, there is enough detail present in each segment to provide an interesting and engaging insight into how past and present cultures view what happens after we die. Nevertheless, if you are looking for a more scholarly assessment of post life belief systems, this is not your resource. 

 

Tongue firmly planted in cheek, Ken offers travel guide staples such as:

• Don’t Miss sites
• What to Eat
• Best-to-avoid hints
• Where-to Stay clues

 

Ken has fun with these reviews of the afterlife but he is never disrespectful of anyone’s beliefs.  

 

Ken even pokes at the afterlife of his own Mormon faith. 

 

“Most visions of the world to come…promise endless leisure and luxury. But not so the afterlife envisioned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As befits their peach-canning, carpool-driving, casserole-delivering image as the industrious honeybees of the American West, Mormons head to the grave prepared to keep on working.” 

 

Ken writes about the depictions of the afterlife in movies and television. His take on the post death world of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey is most righteous and definitely not heinous, dude!

The book can be a bit of a slog. I mean, we have 100 versions of the afterlife to get through.  But overall, Ken’s writing has a deft touch for humor which moves things along. 

 

100 Places to See After You Die: A Travel Guide to the Afterlife is a fun read.  Just don’t wait until after you die to read it.