Putting the Fun in Fundamentalism! A Review of THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY

OK, so I try to maintain a crater-like distance between the work I do for PW and the books I read for fun on my blog.  (Please see the Big Fat Hairy Disclaimer to the right.)  But occasionally there is actually a religion book that is so fun and entertaining that it is inherently blog-worthy.  Such is the case with the new A.J. Jacobs book The Year of Living Biblically.  I've been crowing about this book since I read it in June.  It's hilarious, insightful and smart.  And did I mention that it's hilarious?

Basically, the premise of the book is that the author takes it upon himself to live all of the commandments of the Bible for a full year.  (Well, he does leave out a few things.  He doesn't pluck out his own eye, for example, or kill a magician.) The memoir follows his year, as he does the things we might expect--he stops gossiping, starts giving to charity, and tries to be entirely truthful--and then does other things many readers will find surprising.  Several times I found myself saying, "Yikes!  I never knew that was in the Bible."   I would look it up, just to make sure--and yep, there it was.  That Bible is one seriously wacky book.

I've written a long review of The Year of Living Biblically for Books & Culture, and if you're interested in learning more about the book, you can access the link here. 

Also, the author is touring over the next few weeks to a lot of major cities across the country, including Portland, Boston, New York, Austin, Pasadena, and other places.  He'll be in Cincinnati on Monday, November 13 -- he's speaking and signing at Joseph-Beth at 7:00.  I hope some of you like-minded folks in southern Ohio can come out for it.  In my job, I see so many mediocre and even bad books succeed that when a truly original and special one comes along, I want to help it find its audience. 

Read this book!

Comments

[Mark Ward]

Jana, don't you think that "so you don't eat shellfish" is a canard? Does the NT have nothing to say about how Christians should use the OT? Are NT Christians picking and choosing, or are they following the NT evidence--like Jesus' declaring all foods clean in Mark 7 or Paul's saying categorically that we aren't under law but under grace?

mlwj
B&C reader

[Al Hsu]

I read this book a few weeks back and thought it was a hoot. I blogged about it, too, if you want to see a few of my thoughts on it - I also picked up on the individualism issue. Did you read his earlier book, The Know-It-All? I thought that one was even better. It's the kind of book that Ellen got annoyed with me reading because I kept reading her little trivia tidbits from page after page, just like Jacobs did with his wife while reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica.