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Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment

Average rating: 4/5

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Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment

by A J Jacobs

Simon & Schuster | September 8, 2009 | Hardcover

The uproarious New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It-All gathers his adventures as a human guinea pig into one of the funniest and most enlightening books of the year.

• An irresistible page-turner filled with surprising wisdom: For his first hit book, Jacobs read the Encyclopedia Britannica. For his second, he followed every single rule in the Bible. Now comes a collection of his most outrageous and thought-provoking experiments yet. In The Guinea Pig Diaries, Jacobs goes undercover as a beautiful woman. He outsources everything in his life to India, from answering his emails to arguing with his wife. He spends two months saying whatever is on his mind. He lives like George Washington. Plus several other life-changing experiments-one of which involves public nudity.

• Amazing sales record: The humor of A.J. Jacobs has produced sales that are anything but laughable. His books have more than half a million copies in print, and they have spent a combined twenty-nine weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists and counting. He has inspired many imitators, but none has matched his ability to combine side-splitting entertainment with profound life lessons.

• A media favorite: To promote his books, Jacobs has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, the Today show, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper 360, Conan O'Brien, and NPr's Fresh Air. Jacobs is all over the Internet as well, from Slate to the Huffington Post to Playboy.com. He is a regular contributor to NPR's Weekend Edition. And he's the editor-at-large at Esquire magazine, where versions of some of these experiments have appeared.

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Reviews

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      helpful to you?

    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.

    • Was this review
      helpful to you?

    Rating: 2/5

    The Let Down Diaries.

    Nessa

    2 years ago

    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.

    • Was this review
      helpful to you?

    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.

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    Rating: 4/5

    Very Funny but not deep

    DooBeeDooBeeDoo

    2 years ago

    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.

    This reviewer also recommends:
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Details

From Our Editors

INDIGO RECOMMENDS REVIEW: Ever wonder what it would be like to outsource your life to a stranger overseas? To live like George Washington? To spend months speaking your mind according to a system of Radical Honesty? Well sit back and let the author of the bestsellers The Know It All and The Year of Living Biblically A J Jacobs do it all for you. In the spirit of openness and sincere curiosity that informed his attempts to read the entire Encyclopedia Britanica and to live faithfully according to the rules of the Good Book, A J Jacobs puts himself to the tests. Watch him squirm as he poses nude to accompany an article on Mary Louise Parker. Look over his shoulder as he dates online in the guise of his single nanny. Stare in amazement as he forgoes multitasking in a fruitless effort to concentrate on completing just one task at a time. In this series of human experiments Jacobs comes up against his own weaknesses, everyone else’s expectations and even George Washington’s 101 Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour. With the same gusto and humour shown in his two previous bestsellers Jacobs gives the reader a ringside seat in his adventures as a human guinea pig. Highly recommended.

From the Publisher

The uproarious New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It-All gathers his adventures as a human guinea pig into one of the funniest and most enlightening books of the year.

• An irresistible page-turner filled with surprising wisdom: For his first hit book, Jacobs read the Encyclopedia Britannica. For his second, he followed every single rule in the Bible. Now comes a collection of his most outrageous and thought-provoking experiments yet. In The Guinea Pig Diaries, Jacobs goes undercover as a beautiful woman. He outsources everything in his life to India, from answering his emails to arguing with his wife. He spends two months saying whatever is on his mind. He lives like George Washington. Plus several other life-changing experiments-one of which involves public nudity.

• Amazing sales record: The humor of A.J. Jacobs has produced sales that are anything but laughable. His books have more than half a million copies in print, and they have spent a combined twenty-nine weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists and counting. He has inspired many imitators, but none has matched his ability to combine side-splitting entertainment with profound life lessons.

• A media favorite: To promote his books, Jacobs has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, the Today show, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper 360, Conan O'Brien, and NPr's Fresh Air. Jacobs is all over the Internet as well, from Slate to the Huffington Post to Playboy.com. He is a regular contributor to NPR's Weekend Edition. And he's the editor-at-large at Esquire magazine, where versions of some of these experiments have appeared.

Hardcover

256 Pages, 5.8 x 8.4 x 1 in

September 8, 2009

Simon & Schuster

English


1416599061
9781416599067

From the Critics

"The virtuoso of this self-as-guinea pig genre."

--Brad Tuttle, Time

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