2011 Books 11

[subplotkudzu]

11) The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs: Jacobs is an editor for Esquire magazine who has a niche market of humor books premised around doing something usual. In this first he chronicled his complete read through of the encyclopedia. His third is a collection of essays about a month of complete honest, or pretending to be a woman on a dating service, or pretending to be one of the actors from the movie Shine at the Academy Awards. This one is, as you may have gathered from the title, his attempt to live the bible as literally as possible for a year. In part an effort to understand the biblical literalism movement, it is also an honest, if extreme, effort of an unobservant Jew to come to terms with spirituality. I enjoyed it, but Jacobs is a sort of "If you liked his other stuff you'll like this one" sort of author. 

Comments

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

I'm not exactly observant myself, but I do know enough to know that if he's using only the Bible, he's missing a lot of important details. There's a whole lot of Jewish commentary that he probably should have looked at, if he did not.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Oh, he discusses the Talmud quite a bit, and has a large circle of rabbis, priests and whatnot whom he talks to to make sure he's understanding things properly.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Okay, good. mabfan and I had an amusing conversation about one of his stories.

mabfan: So, when do you celebrate shabbas on Mars?

drcpunk (recalling conversations with osewalrus): Which rabbi are you following, and what does he say?

mabfan: Good answer! Now, the rabbi I asked first wanted to make sure that this answer would be used solely for fictional purposes, and that I would not take it as an actual ruling about shabbas on Mars.