100 Places To Visit After You Die by Ken Jennings

100 Places To Visit After You Die by Ken Jennings

Published June 2023 by Scribner

320 Pages

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley

Publisher's Summary: 

Ever wonder which circles of Dante’s Inferno have the nicest accommodations? Where’s the best place to grab a bite to eat in the ancient Egyptian underworld? How does one dress like a local in the heavenly palace of Hinduism’s Lord Vishnu, or avoid the flesh-eating river serpents in the Klingon afterlife? What hidden treasures can be found off the beaten path in Hades, Valhalla, or NBC’s The Good Place? Find answers to all those questions and more about the world(s) to come in this eternally entertaining book from Ken Jennings. 

100 Places to See After You Die is written in the style of iconic bestselling travel guides—but instead of recommending must-see destinations in Mexico, Thailand, or Rome, Jennings outlines journeys through the afterlife, as dreamed up over 5,000 years of human history by our greatest prophets, poets, mystics, artists, and TV showrunners. This comprehensive index of 100 different afterlife destinations was meticulously researched from sources ranging from the Epic of Gilgamesh to modern-day pop songs, video games, and Simpsons episodes. Get ready for whatever post-mortal destiny awaits you, whether it’s an astral plane, a Hieronymus Bosch hellscape, or the baseball diamond from Field of Dreams. 

Fascinating, funny, and irreverent, this light-hearted memento mori will help you create your very own bucket list—for after you’ve kicked the bucket.

My Thoughts: 

Yes. THAT Ken Jennings. Which made this one interesting to me even if the title and description hadn't intrigued me, which they did. 

Yes, this book is funny and irreverent and light-hearted. Which made me so happy - I was so hoping that Jennings would be just as humorous in writing as he seems to be on t.v. And, no surprise, just as smart. There are, actually, one hundred entries in this book, in seven different categories. He includes references to the afterlife in mythology, religion, books, movies, television, music and theater, and a miscellaneous group. Yes, I know it says 100 in the title, but I didn't seriously believe that there would be 100 different ways that Jennings could refer to the afterlife. I don't for a minute believe that Jennings pulled these 100 references off the top of his head, but he had to have had a pretty good number to start with or he wouldn't have even considered the idea for a book, right? 

This is not a book to be read straight through; it's a book to read a couple of chapters at a time, especially in the mythology and religion sections. There's a lot to be said about all of those references and if you read too many at once, it's for it to begin to feel a little repetitive and (for me) a little boring. But read a bit at a time, the humor holds up much better. As does your ability to refresh your memory in one of those areas; or, as I did, learn new things. 

Of course, when we got to television, movies, and books, I was more in my element...and the chapters were shorter and more diverse so it became easier to read a few more chapters at a time. Also, those chapters were a lot less gruesome. Those mythology and religious afterlives can be crazy gruesome! Not that Dante wasn't every bit their equal. 

Where can you choose to travel to in the afterlife? Hades and Valhalla (of course), the Bardo, Limbo, Nirvana, Johanna and Jannah, the Three Kingdoms of Glory, Aslan's Country, King's Cross, Pandemonium, the Bogus Journey, Hotel Hades, Iowa, the Bad Place, Robot Hell, Hadestown, Rock and Roll Heaven, and the Outer Planes. 

It's great fun and it's definitely one I'd recommend. Just put it on your coffee table or nightstand, and read a chapter or two every night for maximum enjoyment! 

Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion

Let Me Tell You What I Mean  by Joan Didion

192 pages

Published January 2021 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

These pieces from 1968 to 2000, never before gathered together, offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary figure. They showcase Joan Didion's incisive reporting, her empathetic gaze, and her role as "an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time" (The New York Times Book Review).

Here, Didion touches on topics ranging from newspapers ("the problem is not so much whether one trusts the news as to whether one finds it"), to the fantasy of San Simeon, to not getting into Stanford. In "Why I Write," Didion ponders the act of writing: "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means." From her admiration for Hemingway's sentences to her acknowledgment that Martha Stewart's story is one "that has historically encouraged women in this country, even as it has threatened men," these essays are acutely and brilliantly observed. Each piece is classic Didion: incisive, bemused, and stunningly prescient.

My Thoughts: 

It's been a while since I've read a collection of essays and every time I do I wonder why I don't read them more often. Fortunately, there are several collections of Didion's work that I have yet to read and I happen to own some. After reading this collection, I'm reminded of how great Didion's observations and writing are and why I need to get to those other books. 

This collection includes a number of Didion's early essays, as well as some written in the late 1990's. What's most remarkable about the early essays is how well they still stand up in their observations. Didion calls out the media for its bias, those who miss the point of what makes Martha Steward truly a female icon, and false facade celebrity. The title of the collection truly is what ties this collection together - here Didion is explaining to readers exactly what she means and she never minces words.

It's surprising to me to learn, in this collection, that Didion felt like she was a "failed" intellectual given her intelligence, insightfulness, and interest in the human condition. Here she also writes about learning that she would never be a great writer of short stories when she was in college and cowed by her professor and the other students. For a woman who was so revered, it's remarkable to find her to be so humble. 

I have one quibble with one of the stories in this collection. In Gaining Serenity, Didion writes about the experience of attending a Gamblers Anonymous meeting but it's not clear why she was there. Was she there because she herself had a problem? Was she there as a support for one of the addicts? Because one thing I have learned in the past few years is that observers are not welcome at these meetings. The word "anonymous" is in the name for a reason. If you haven't been involved in some way with the addiction, you will never understand what those meetings mean to the people who attend the meetings. Do some of the addicts seem to use the meetings as a kind of confessional that allows them to go out and sin again? Maybe. Does some of the dogma seem to say that the addition is in the hands of a higher power and perhaps out of the control of the addict. Perhaps. But Didion seems to have gotten hung up on two things: that many of the people relapse and that, in the end, they seem to echo one another in what they are saying. But the thing is, these meetings, and the recovery process they advocate, work. And, in the end, of course the addicts are all seeking the same thing, serenity. Aren't we all? 

Ok, that was way more than a quibble. But it is the only complaint I have with this collection. Didion will always make you think and maybe rethink things you thought you understood. And that's always a good thing. As is this collection. 

The Fire This Time edited by Jesmyn Ward

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race edited by Jesmyn Ward
Read by Cherise Booth, Michael Early, Kevin R. Free, Korey Jackson, Susan Spain
Published August 2016 by Scribner
Source: audiobook checked out from my local library

Publisher’s Summary:
In light of recent tragedies and widespread protests across the nation, The Progressive magazine republished one of its most famous pieces: James Baldwin’s 1962 “Letter to My Nephew,” which was later published in his landmark book, The Fire Next Time. Addressing his fifteen-year-old namesake on the one hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Baldwin wrote: “You know and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon.”



Award-winning author Jesmyn Ward knows that Baldwin’s words ring as true as ever today. In response, she has gathered short essays, memoir, and a few essential poems to engage the question of race in the United States. And she has turned to some of her generation’s most original thinkers and writers to give voice to their concerns.



The Fire This Time is divided into three parts that shine a light on the darkest corners of our history, wrestle with our current predicament, and envision a better future. Of the eighteen pieces, ten were written specifically for this volume.



In the fifty-odd years since Baldwin’s essay was published, entire generations have dared everything and made significant progress. But the idea that we are living in the post-Civil Rights era, that we are a “post-racial” society is an inaccurate and harmful reflection of a truth the country must confront. Baldwin’s “fire next time” is now upon us, and it needs to be talked about.



Contributors include Carol Anderson, Jericho Brown, Garnette Cadogan, Edwidge Danticat, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Mitchell S. Jackson, Honoree Jeffers, Kima Jones, Kiese Laymon, Daniel Jose Older, Emily Raboteau, Claudia Rankine, Clint Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Wendy S. Walters, Isabel Wilkerson, and Kevin Young.

My Thoughts:
Jesmyn Ward kicks off this book with a startling recollection from a visit she and some high school classmates made to the office of Trent Lott, then one of her state’s senators, in Washington.

“Trent Lott took a whip as long as a car off his office table, where it lay coiled and shiny brown, and said to my one male schoolmate who grinned at Lott enthusiastically: Let’s show ‘em how us good old boys do it. And then he swung that whip through the air and cracked it above our heads, again and again. I remember the experience in my bones.” 

Given Ward’s age, this must have been in the mid-1990’s. It is shocking to think that Lott found that behavior perfectly acceptable. James Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time that love would allow us to “end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country…” Sadly, more than 20 years after Wards encounter with Lott and almost 60 years since Baldwin’s book was published, Lott’s actions seem to speak to the way some white Americans still think about black people. Consider that this book was published four years ago, just as our first black president was finishing out his second term and just before we elected a president who has courted the kind of people who think like Trent Lott. Four years after it was published, this book feels even more timely.

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah perhaps says it best, “If I knew anything about being black in America, it was that nothing was guaranteed.” Again and again, the names Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Abner Louima, and those killed at Charleston’s Emanuel Church are invoked as a reminder of this. But Ward also wants to remind us, “We are writing an epic, wherein black lives carry worth.” How sad that we need to be reminded.

The authors of these pieces want us to understand both points. Claudia Rankine writes about being the mother of black sons; Garnette Cadogan writes about how different walking as a black man was when he moved from Jamaica to New Orleans, where he suddenly was perceived by some as being a danger; Mitchell S. Jackson reflects on the father figures in his life, good and bad; Ghansah writes about being the first person of color working for an employer; and Edwidge Danticat writes about needing to have two conversations with her daughters to explain “why we’re here” and “why it’s not always a promised land for people who look like us.

The reading for this book is excellent; but, in listening to it, I did this book a disservice. If you were, say, sitting on your patio listening to a book while relaxing, sure, it would be great. But if you are listening to this book while you are doing other things (which I was), it will not have the impact it almost certainly would have had if you had picked it up and read it in print. I wish I had done that. I’ve had to go back and re-listen to a number of passages before I could write this review and it has made all the difference. This book deserved my full attention.