The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

In the familiar style that he perfected in "The Know It All" and "The Year of Living Biblically", Jacobs takes us through his life as a series of "experiments", from outsourcing to India such daily routines as reading bedtime stories to his young children to trying to live according to the 110 "Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour" that George Washington formulated for himself as a young man. In the chapter "The Truth About Nakedness" Jacobs shares with us the full range of emotions he experienced while posing nude for a photo shoot for Esquire Magazine (his employer) in order to induce Mary Louise Parker to similarly pose (the book includes only a photo of the writer).
And his effort to become a disciplined "unitasker" by (among other matters) reciting out loud (seemingly to himself) his shopping list while in the supermarket, and the reactions of bystanding shoppers, was among the many moments of droll humor in the book.
Perhaps my personal favorite of the Jacobs experiments was "The Rationality Project", his effort to identify as rationally as possible, the "right" toothpaste from among the 40 or so on the shelf. To do so, Jacobs explains the need to remove from the decision making process the "Halo effect", the "Availability Fallacy", "Confirmation Bias", the "Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy" and other of the "irrational biases and Darwinian anachronisms" that influence all of us in making the most mundane of our choices.
And once again it is his wife Julie who, in her long-suffering style, provides the necessary dose of reality to bring his over-the-top eccentricities back down to earth.
Fans of A. J. Jacobs will once again be amply rewarded.

As another reviewer pointed out, many of the essays in this collection have already been published, so if you are a die-hard A.J. Jacobs follower you might already have seen them. That being said, I hadn't read them and was, for the most part, very happy with discovering them for the first time. I love Mr. Jacobs writing style, witty, a bit self-depricating yet letting a little intelligence shine through as well. One of my favorite things about all of his 'experiments' is that he comes away from the experience having learned something, not just a little factual tidbit but some sort of life lesson he shares with the reader, about himself or thoughts on life in general. My one complaint with this collection is that a couple of the essays have a book-reportish quality to them, in that too many articles/other sources are quoted and the material seems to just parrot back what others have already said. Still definitely worth checking out though I would recommend reading his other two, full-length books to get a true appreciation of this author!
** on a Kindle note, the pictures are not at all clear so that was disappointing but certainly not a deal breaker

A.J. Jacobs is the thinking person's Walter Mitty. Except instead of physically demanding challenges --- with perhaps one exception --- he deals in the cerebral. The editor-at-large for Esquire, who lived the examined life in THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY and read every entry in the Encyclopędia Britannica in THE KNOW-IT-ALL, collects several shorter but similarly thought-provoking pieces in THE GUINEA PIG DIARIES, where he seems too humble even to refer to himself in that regard.

Who among us hasn't wished to just dump all the minutia of everyday life into someone else's lap? Jacobs accomplishes this in his essay, "My Outsourced Life," starting off with little things, like shopping, and escalating to conducting arguments with his long-suffering wife, Julie, who deserves major props for putting up with all of these schemes. (By the way, she finally gets a measure of recompense as hubby caters to her every wish for a month in "Whipped.")

Some of Jacobs's experiments border on the dangerous, as when he resolves to spend a month being radically honest ("I Think You're Fat") or pretends to be a movie personality, crashing the Oscar Awards ("240 Minutes of Fame"). While published under the general category of humor, THE GUINEA PIG DIARIES could also be considered a philosophical treatise. In "The Rationality Project," Jacobs channels Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner of FREAKONOMICS fame when he deconstructs several behavioral theories to prove their irrationalities.

Some of the pieces seem to contradict each other. The book leads off with Jacobs masquerading as a beautiful woman as he attempts to play an online Cyrano for the family's lovely nanny. For all the anecdotes he includes regarding this well-intentioned gesture, one can imagine the creepy stuff that didn't make it into print. In another essay, the tables are turned as Jacobs becomes objectified as a condition for an article and photo shoot of "Weeds" star Mary-Louise Parker ("The Truth About Nakedness"). Both of these seem to go against his attempt to follow the tenets of our nation's first president ("What Would George Washington Do?"). Although he doesn't actually follow said behavior as he did in THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY, it's an interesting look at the mores of a more genteel period; there's something to be said about the dignity and formality with which our foreparents comported themselves.

Perhaps the most difficult of the projects was the concentration required to do just one thing at a time, to totally immerse oneself in the here and now ("The Unitasker"). Can anyone these days but the most devoted yogi actually focus to that extent? Not me; as I write this I'm checking my email, listening to music and drinking my coffee, with the U.S. Open on in the background.

One wonders how long Jacobs maintained some of these behaviors after completing the assignments. He has said there are some habits he acquired during his BIBLICALLY period that he tries to maintain. Does he still retain all the knowledge from reading the encyclopedia? Can he still just stop and smell the roses? Has he managed to keep that buff physique for which he worked so hard for the nude photo shoot?

Can you say "sequel"?

--- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan

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