BOOK REVIEW: The Guinea Pig Diaries by A. J. Jacobs

So MillieJupiter brought me an audio book the other day just out of the blue. Never heard of it, never heard of the author. She told me she had not read it but had it recommended by several of her patrons (she is a librarian…) This is not a recipe for getting me to read something but contrary to my norm, I decided to give this one a try and I am so glad I did.

This book is funny, downright, laugh out loud funny, look around while driving to see if other people are seeing you laugh funny. The author performs social / psychological experiments on himself, and details the results. His first book was about living an entire year following the rules of the bible. Not just the obvious “thou shalt not kill” stuff but things like not cutting his beard and not wearing clothes of mixed fabrics. “The Guinea Pig Diaries” takes this concept a bit further, detailing a number of social experiments and then discussing the good and bad of each. What kind of experiments you ask?

Well, he poses as a beautiful woman on a dating web site to understand the frustrations a woman in this position would feel. He totally accepts radical honesty therapy and lives his life for a time being brutally honest. He out sources his life to India, hiring two different firms to handle his business and personal life. He does everything his wife asks for a month. He impersonates a movie star at the Oscar Awards, poses nude for a article in Esquire magazine. He lives his life according to George Washington’s 110 rules of behavior. All these and more are reported on, both the positives and negatives of his experience.

He reads the audio book himself which adds to the experience in my opinion. He has a bit of a quirky voice, nasally with accents and emphasis in different places than you would expect which adds to the humor. And then there is the various stories he tells. In his honesty experiment telling his mother-in-law, he hates her birthday present to him (a gift card, he feels like he is given a chore to do). Having an argument with his wife thru the Indian outsourcing group and having them answer his email and write press releases are both hysterical. Letting some guy down gently after he realizes he is not right for “her” is a classic. Having the Indian group purchase gifts for his wife and son for their birthdays and reading to his son one night when he has work to do, is just scream out loud funny as he details a man with an accent read the newspaper to his 4 year old (it’s not the words that are important but the cadence and tone of the voice that helps him off to sleep).

Overall, I give this book a rating of Four Penguins.

The thing that keeps me from giving it five penguins is that some people might be irritated by his voice and I wondered how the stories would be in print, rather than just listening. It has humor, it is entertaining and it is fun. If you want a taste of his style, he was on Stephen Colbert, and this link will bring you to several of Jacobs’ videos about the experiments and his books. Very good stuff.

Book Review: The Pluto Files, by Neil deGrasse Tyson

I really like Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. He is the Director of the Haden Planetarium in NYC and I became familiar with him on his many TV show appearances, including some very memorable ones on The Stephen Colbert Show (search YouTube for some of them). He is smart, articulate and able to communicate with the masses on subject mostly over our heads (pun intended!). He has become a pop culture icon, on the lines of Mr. Wizard and Bill Nye, the Science guy, while also maintaining a standing in the group of scientists such as Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan.

After reading Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Almost Everything” I commented in my review that I was getting into these science books and Tyson’s fit the bill. I dare say that I was right in that this book too does a good job of describing, evaluating and coming to a plausible resolution to a question that has bothered scientists for generations – Is Pluto a Planet?

Tyson sets off to deal with this issue in a wonderful way. First he begins by stating the problem and then gives us a history lesson in how Pluto was discovered and considered a planet. Then he gets into the cultural and societal impact this has (plutonium named after Pluto, Disney Pluto, not so). This is then contrasted to societal reactions to the possibility of the declassification of Pluto status which he highlights I by including texts from letters and emails he received from young and old alike, decrying this change. Finally he spends a good part of the book discussing his role as the director of the Haden Planetarium as the Rose Center was built which included information about the status of Pluto. Tyson’s words and actions reveal a person open to further learning and considerate of the effect those changes will have on others. This is wonderfully punctuated by many, many emails and letters he includes that show the strong feelings on both sides of this issue. They are funny, witty and really show how much people care about something as simple as this.

One final note. I love Tyson’s voice, its cadence and balance and the sense of wonderment and excitement he is able to convey so I was very disappointed to find out he did not do the reading of this book, rather it was Mirron Willis. Willis is good, a winner of several audio book reading awards but I was disappointed none the less. It is for this reason that I can only give this book a rating of 4 Penguins. I wanted Dr. Tyson to read it to me!

It is well structured, entertaining and I could easily recommend it to anyone. Lots of positives, only the reader situation could be considered a negative at all. Enjoy it!