(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Nonfiction Views: 100 Places to See After You Die, plus publishing news and more new nonfiction [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-06-13 In my earlier days, I used to travel a lot. In my twenties and thirties, every two or three years I would take off anywhere from two months to a year and journey to some exotic locale. After meeting my wife when I was 38, the pattern continued: we took three trips lasting two months each to Kenya and to India, Nepal and Tibet. Then things changed somewhat: we still took an exotic trip every couple of years, but now limited to just a couple weeks duration. But after 2010, when we went to Morocco for a couple weeks, the traveling came to a halt for a variety of reasons. I mourn that loss of travel; it had been an essential rhythm of my life. I still hope we can resume traveling at some point. With those thoughts as preface, you can imagine how thrilled I was to see the new book by Ken Jennings, 100 Places to See After You Die: A Travel Guide to the Afterlife, published today. Hey! If for some reason I don’t get to travel any more in this lifetime, that doesn’t mean it has to end completely! Jennings writes well-researched books presented in a breezy, humorous style, similar to the work of Mary Roach. He was an anonymous software engineer until 2004, when a 74-game, $2.5 million streak on the television game show Jeopardy catapulted him to fame. Among the topics he’s written about in earlier books are cartography and its aficionados (Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks), parenting and its deficients (Because I Said So!: The Truth Behind the Myths, Tales, and Warnings Every Generation Passes Down to Its Kids), and comedy and its practitioners (Planet Funny: How Comedy Ruined Everything). In this book, he takes through the afterlife imaginings of religions, mythologies, literature, art and pop culture from around the world. The answer is, “What book is truly to die for?” The book covers some of the most renowned don’t-miss destinations that should be on everyone’s kick the bucket list. There is Hades, which, though described by Virgil as a dim and colorless place, you can stil have the thrill of seeing Cerberus, the three-headed dog, Sisyphus pushing his boulder uphill, or Tityus, chained to a boulder as vultures nibble on his liver. There’s the Norse god Odin’s hall of the slain, Valhalla, entered through 540 doors, each wide enough to accommodate 800 men at a time. Jennings suggests you treat yourself to a cup of ale served by the Valkyries, who work as barmaids when not occupied by their other job as death maidens in armor dripping with blood. Judaism offers what might be considered the all-inclusive Club Med of the afterlife, at least in a vision described by rabbis beginning in medieval times. Getting there isn’t easy: you have to spend a year passing through the hellish Gehenna, with its pits of fire, black worms and angels bashing your teeth in with rocks. Oh, but then, the archangel Michael will welcome you to Gan Eden, where the rivers flow with your choice of milk and honey or wine and oil. A single grape will produce enough wine to refill your glass thirty times, and the Tree of Life bears a half million varieties of fruit.Hmmm...I can’t help but notice that the menu Jennings describes is entirely beverages and fruit. This leads me to suspect that a new set of teeth doesn't come with the deal. On second thought, I’m thinking that Mahayana Buddhism offers the better Club Med experience. Buddhism generally touts the goal of reaching Nirvana, the complete abandonment of self. Indeed, in the advance copy of 100 Places to See After You Die that I’m reading, the chapter on Nirvana consists of a single blank page. I think this is a joke, but I plan to confirm this with the actual published book. However, in this other strain of Buddhism, the monk Amitabha vowed that when he reached perfection it would manifest into a beautiful destination for all those who call upon his name in the moment of death. This so-called Western Paradise offers beautiful landscapes, jeweled pavilions, and hundreds of delicacies served at every meal. Some places you’ve enjoyed in reading during your lifetime are included as destinations in the afterlife: Aslan’s Country, from C. S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles; The Bridge, from Flannery O’Connor’s posthumously published short story “Revelations; the Bardo as presented in George Saunders’ novel Lincoln in the Bardo; the realms described by Dante and by Milton; and many more. Even Hogwarts makes the list. The pop culture itinerary was for me the weakest part of the book’s journey, offering quick looks at dozens of afterlife portrayals in movies, television, songs and theater. Mildly amusing, but for me not as interesting as the preceding sections. Finally...OMG, can we please have Trump’s various trials relocated to Diwu, the underworld Dark City of Chinese mythology! This is a purgatorial world of ten tribunals, each the jurisdiction of a legendary judge-king….Each court is divided into sixteen wards, and each ward includes punishments for eight different sins, so many of the offenses addressed here are charmingly specific: people who complained about the weather, people who threw broken pottery shards over the fence (Han dynasty litterbugs!), people who borrowed books and didn’t return them. The accounting may be thorough, but the penalties are brutal. You might be sawed in half, drowned in a pool of blood, pounded to meat jelly in a giant mortar, boiled in hot oil. The lustful are placed next to a superheated brass pillar, which they will repeatedly throw their arms around, mistaking it for their beloved. Arsonists are fed through a rice-husking machine, and committers of infanticide get iron snakes slithering in and out of their eyes and ears and mouth. But the most diabolical torture of all is a simple tower called the Terrace for Viewing One’s Own Village. Climb up and take a clear-eyed look at your earthly hometown. Surprise! You’ve been completely forgotten! Nobody is praying for you, your last wishes have been disregarded, your partner has remarried, and your heirs are squandering your hard-earned possessions. Truly, this is the judicial prosecution of Trump’s multiple sins and crimes that is the stuff of dreams for me. BOOK NEWS The biggest and most annoying book news of the week was the announcement by author Elizabeth Gilbert of the publication date of her next novel The Snow Forest for next February...and within a week announcing that she was postponing it. Why? Because she had received a torrent of angry criticism and one-star reviews (of a book none of the reviewers had read) because she committed the callous, heartless sin of writing a novel set in Russia. How dare she reward Russia and undercut Ukraine in this way, the people raged. This one makes me really angry, even more than the demands that authors refrain from writing about any culture other than their own, even more than the ‘cleaning up’ of old books by editing out references that might offend modern sensibilities. What in the hell do all these idiots think writing is about? For the record, the novel is set in the 1930s and is about a family who is trying to resist the Russian government. It is hard to understand both the reasons for the outrage, and for why Gilbert gave in to this pressure. I enjoyed her memoir Eat Pray Love and her novels The Signature of All Things and City of Girls. As author Rebecca Makkai is quoted in this article on the controversy in the New York Times (the link should be free for all to read): “So apparently, wherever you set your novel, you’d better hope to hell that by publication date (usually about a year after you turned it in) that place isn’t up to bad things, or you are personally complicit in them.” THIS WEEK’S NEW NOTABLE NONFICTION All book links in this diary are to my online bookstore The Literate Lizard. If you already have a favorite indie bookstore, please keep supporting them. If you’re able to throw a little business my way, that would be appreciated. Use the coupon code DAILYKOS for 15% off your order, in gratitude for your support (an ever-changing smattering of new releases are already discounted 15% each week). We also partner Libro.fm for audiobooks. Libro.fm is similar to Amazon’s Audible, with a la carte audiobooks, or a $14.99 monthly membership which includes the audiobook of your choice and 20% off subsequent purchases during the month. READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/13/2174545/-Nonfiction-Views-100-Places-to-See-After-You-Die-plus-publishing-news-and-more-new-nonfiction Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/