The Year of Living Biblically

Title: The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
Author: A.J. Jacobs
Genre: Experimental Journalism
Pages (words): 416 (N/A)
Readability: N/A
Rating (out of 5 stars): ****
Reviewed by: Ben
Description: A.J. Jacobs follows up his book about reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica (my review of that book is here) with a chronicle of his quest to live the Bible literally for an entire year.  And I mean literally.  He grows a beard, wears only white clothes, stones adulterers, and is absolutely honest to the point of brutality.  He participates in sacrifice, and circumcises his newborn sons.  This book follows his journey, giving details of how the quest affects his life, his way of thinking, and his attitude towards God.
Thoughts: I really enjoyed Jacobs' first book, The Know-It-All, so I thought I'd give this one a try.  It was even better than The Know-It-All.  The Year of Living Biblically was not nearly as blasphemous as it sounds, actually.  I really appreciated that Jacobs approached the task seriously.  At the start of the year, he is basically agnostic and completely secular.  He's never gone to church, doesn't believe in God, and is skeptical of religion.  But, he's afraid that he's missing out on something, and so he decides to live strictly by the Bible for a year.  Not the way I would go about learning about religion, but, hey, if you can get a book deal out of it I guess you do it.  Anyway, the book has it's funny parts of course, like when he has to have a specialist come to make sure that his clothing doesn't have mixed fibers in it, but the parts about him trying not to covet, or learning to pray, are actually really good.  He gains a huge respect for religion, and it was very interesting to watch his outlook on life change and he tried to live the principles of the Bible.  I would highly recommend the book to anyone.  It's entertaining and enlightening at the same time.  And, it made me really, really grateful to have The Book of Mormon and modern-day prophets that can help us know which commandments are still in force and which are obsolete.  I'd hate to have to play a ram's horn at the beginning of each new moon.
Disclaimer:  There's a bit of swearing in the book, but it's pretty clean overall.