“The loudest, rowdiest, most drunken party of my life…with several hundred Hasidic men" -A. J. Jacobs

Off the Shelf

By Allison Tyler    |   Friday, May 02, 2014

I love A. J. Jacobs and his commitment to flying his freak flag, and documenting the process. From reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica in The Know-It-All, to his humble quest for bodily perfection in Drop Dead Healthy, to his engrossment in self-improvement in My Life as an Experiment, Jacobs’ devotion to his undertakings never waivers.

A friend who does not feel the same affection for Jacbos (sorry, A. J.!) exclaimed, “Ugh! How can you stand him? He’s so insecure, and he only writes about himself!”
“He does not,” I countered, “he writes about his curiosities and passions. I think he’s funny.”
“Well,” she replied, scrunching up her nose and making an ugly face, “I don’t.”
I’ve discovered that A. J. Jacobs is as polarizing as cilantro; people either love him and everything he writes, or they hate him, and think he tastes like soap. Of course, neither my friend nor I know him, so our judgment, love or hate, is just that, a judgment . . . and who are we to judge?

In The Year of Living Biblically, A. J. Jacobs asks himself this same question as he attempts to live his life according to a literal reading of the Bible. More