Reading for me usually happens at night before bed. It might be a few minutes of a magazine and my eyelids start to get heavy or it could be an hour depending on which Harry Potter novel has come out. (Dang, no more of those...) It's not often I read during the day but the last couple of weekends I have started the weekend morning off wih a few more pages.
This morning it was to finish up the last section of David Sedaris's new book. It was thoroughly enjoyable and I will loan it to anyone who wants it. Yesterday I picked up two books that were waiting for me at the library. The first is The Know It All by A.J. Jacobs.
I had listened to his newer book, The Year Of Living Biblically on the drive back from the Callahan's a few weeks ago and enjoyed it so much I wanted to go back to Mr. Jacob's first book.
The Year of Living Biblically is quite unexpected. Mr. Jacobs is not a man of faith. Jewish but raised with barely any practice, not even a bah mitzvah, he decided to explore the book that seems to get so many people in such hot water. I really recommend it as it is touching and funny and somewhat inspiring. I won't spoil it for you, but it has next to nothing to do with Religion and God (notice the capital letters). It's about faith and spirit and your fellow man.
The Know It All promises to have some pretty fun stuff going on, mostly because Mr. Jacobs laughs easily at himself, something I'm learning to do better. Speaking of laughing at myself, while I don't need/use glasses currently, the copy of the book I got is large print and I have to say I quite like it.
Speaking of God, I also reborrowed The God Delusion and hope to get to it not long after The Know it All.
I thought you might be interested in this link to A.J. giving at talk at TED. The talks at TED are almost always fascinating, and this one is no exception. You really get a sense of how he throws himself into all of his projects.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/a_j_jacobs_year_of_living_biblically.html
Posted by: Buckley | July 17, 2008 at 09:10 PM