Walking In Wuhan

I picked up this book the day it arrived and dove into it. The author, AJ Jacobs, is an editor at Esquire and often takes on long-term, projects that have big effects on his daily life. For his first book, Jacobs read the Encyclopedia Britannica cover-to-cover. A few years ago he wrote a story called My Outsourced Life where he had companies in India take over the daily minutia of his daily life ie: reading to his son, answering emails fighting with his wife.

His biggest project of all is his most recent work, A Year of Living Biblically, where he sought to life his life through a strict interpretation of the bible. He grows a beard, always wears white, afixes tassels to his clothing and even stones an adulterer. He approached the project from an agnostic point of view, and does a good job of taking an unbiased approach to living biblically. He out-bible-talks a Jehovah's Witness and doesn't lie to his children -- difficult to do when your kid just won't leave the store because he wants candy.



He wrestles with big spiritual questions, including, can somebody follow the moral teachings of Jesus if they don't believe that Christ died for humanity's sins? The book is a good read and raises interesting questions about fundamentalist religion. Courtney and I went and saw Jacobs speak when he stopped through Berkeley. Though he mainly used lines he also used in his book, "I'm Jewish in the same way that the Olive Garden is Italian," for example, he mentioned that he started noticing the smaller things in life that he was thankful for because he prayed daily. The book is definitely an interesting concept -- and the kind of journalism I'd like to someday practice -- and showcases Jacobs strength for mixing narrative with the occasional joke.