Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to outsource your entire life to India? I mean EVERYTHING!

Well wonder no longer, as this book presents this scenario, and others both more and less useful.

It really did leave me wondering: If this guy can make big bucks doing this stuff and writing about it, why can't I?

Then I realized my wife would kill me if I did, and decided to leave it to the professionals. In the meantime, I have enjoyed living vicariously through the author, and would suggest you read about his exploits as well.

Having read and loved Jacobs previous two books, The Know It All and The Year of Living Biblically, I was excited to see he had written a new book.
However, his two earlier experiments each took a year whereas the experiments in this book took roughly a month each. None of them were very in depth due to being done so quickly. This would probably be a great book for anyone with ADD.

What really annoyed me though was that a great deal of this book was made up of stories published in his first two books. I couldn't help but feel like I'd paid for the same thing twice. In fact if I hadn't gotten 40% off of this book when I bought it I would probably be writing a really nasty review right now, as well as an email to Jacobs himself.

With his latest title, author A.J. Jacobs, already famous for performing social "experiments" on himself, decided to focus on several smaller projects rather than one larger one (such as reading the encyclopedia). These experiments include suce things as living by George Washington's Rules of Civility and spending an entire month catering to his wife's every whim (probably the highlight of the book.)

Jacobs certainly made the right decision to not write an entire book about these topics but some of them aren't really worthy of being done at all. Living by Washington's rules can really be summed up with "being polite to everyone plus bowing".

I still enjoy Jacobs sense of humor and enjoy hearing tales about his long suffering wife (who gets to contribute to this title) but this book doesn't quite rise to the level of his previous efforts.

I picked up this book as I had previously read "A Year of Living Biblically", and had searched out some of Mr. Jacob's articles he wrote for Esquire.

I was somewhat disapointed when it turned out many of those articles were contained within this book, but it was entertaining nonetheless.

I really enjoy the author's voice and many parts made myself laugh out loud or to repeat out loud to my husband.

Books rarely make me laugh. I might smile or grin and share a story but i rarely laugh out loud. I did with this book. I did not read either of his previous two books so i have nothing to compare it with. i did not pick this book up with the intention of learning anything like perhaps one might with his previous one. i was only looking to be entertained.
In the same genre as perhaps Freakanomics, Blink or Outliers where the reader gets a very high level view of various concepts this book does the same but with a much funnier perspective.

I really like "The Guinea Pig Diaries". I guess I had the advantage of not having particular interest to his previous two books; I can enjoy this one without preconception or over-expectation from A. J. Jacobs. Nevertheless, "The Guinea Pig Diaries" did make me laugh. For each topics Jacobs came by, he took it to the extreme. I found the chapter on outsourcing his life with the help of Indian assistants ironic and funny. Having read those same reference books that he listed under the Rationality Project, I have to give Jacobs credit for his clever experimentation (even though sometimes impractical and edging on misinterpretation). I laughed out loud, literally, when I read of his quest to be the perfect husband for a month.

The high point that makes this book entertaining and readable would be the smooth, creative and humorous way of how Jacobs weaved his sentences. If you are one of those who like to comment "That's a good one" for witty remarks you heard, then you may have to be prepared for having to say it a great many times through the reading of "The Guinea Pig Diaries".

After reading (and loving) 'The Year of Living Biblically' I couldn't wait to read A.J. Jacobs new book. Unfortunately 'The Guinea Pig Diaries' was not as good as I had expected. What made 'Living Biblically' so good was that Jacobs lived the fanatically religious lifestyle for a full year, but in this book no experiment lasted longer than a month, with one lasting only a single day (when he impersonated a celebrity at the Oscars) so they never seem as thorough or focused. If i wanted to read an academic book on any of the topics Jacobs studied I would have - I wanted this book to provide insight into each of the topics but because of the short length of each one it never did. In 'Living Biblically' Jacobs seems to be an 'expert' on all things Old and New Testiment because of the length and dedication of the experiment, but here it just seems like he is a regular Joe giving his opinion.

Entertaining, but a bit of a let down compared to his excellent first two books.