Sum by David Eagleman: Book #1 for 2020
This book is not a continuous narrative, but 40 separate visions of either the afterlife or alternate versions of the true reason why we are on earth.
All of the different chapters are relatively short, so if there is one that doesn't quite hit the mark (and these are very few) you know there will be another to divert your attention very soon.
Rather than go through all the individual mini-stories, I'll go through a few of my favourites:
The first story is based on how statisticians like to comment on how long the average time a person does different activities, like watching the television. In this version of the afterlife, you relive every moment of your life, but with linked activities like sleeping and driving all placed together like a montage, in a single event, so at one point you end up spending a long time sleeping; it even includes 27 hours of excruciating pain for every accident you suffered. It was an entertaining way for the book to start.
Another of the accounts has departed souls ending up as "extras" in the dreams of the living, and so appearing in the background of whatever the dreamer was dreaming about. I enjoyed this one to the point that I can't think about my dreams now without imagining all the random people in it as just people in the afterlife being forced to act in my dreams; it was definitely a novel idea.
There was another story that involved the deceased watching all of earth on giant TV screens, and another where it turns out that we are all computing devices sent by "cartographers" to help us map out Earth.
I noticed that many of the accounts came with unexpected twist endings, and there was some humour that made me smile at times. Some of the concepts put me in mind of Black Mirror, and my only real complaint was that the final account sounded like it had been lifted sraight out of an old episode of Red Dwarf.
The subject matter of the book put me in mind of Douglas Adams, but written in a style similar to George Saunders with its constant unconventional second-person narrative. I also found this book quite dense at times, so I found it best to read in a quiet room, free of distractions.
I would definitely recommend this.