The Year of Living Biblically
by Jacobs, A. J. · first published 2007
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3recommended by
7HN commenters
2009–2026first – last mentioned
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Totally agree. If you like this style of memoir + deep subject dive, I also highly recommend anything by A.J. Jacobs - his "Year of Living Biblically", and "The Know-It-All" are great reads in the same vein.
on “Ask HN: What non-fiction do you read?” ↗You might find this book a hoot. I did: https://ajjacobs.com/books/the-year-of-living-biblically/
on “Jewish Calendar Demystified (2007)” ↗AJ Jacobs writes really cool 'project' pieces: he dedicates himself to an idea and writes articles and books about it. I loved "A year of living biblically" and am hoping to read "Know it all" sometime soon.
on “Radical Honesty: I Think You're Fat (2007)” ↗…allowed to cook or touch the water supply - essentially they are considered untouchable. Every religion has elaborate rules to oppress woman. FYI, the Hebrew Bible has all the same stuff. (So I read in The Year of Living Biblically.) It's a question of "how literally does society obey those rules?" Will Americans who use the Bible to justify their bigotry against gay people ... also agree to lock up Sarah Palin for five days/month?…
on “The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary” ↗These things remind me of the book “My Year of Living Biblically” by A.J. Jacobs. In our lives if we stopped to consult a list of all the platitudes we’ve ever come across one by one each time we did or experienced anything it would be similarly as absurd full of contradiction…
on “One hundred and one rules of effective living” ↗Seems to me like a "Year of Living Biblically" kind of endeavor -- doing something for the sake of being able to say you did it. If you actually succeed in doing it, it shows an admirable degree of personal discipline. But what if, instead, you…
on “10 Years of Great Books” ↗There's a writer from Esquire who's basically made a living doing experiments like this. He's written things like The Year Of Living Biblically [1] (self-explanatory), The Know-It-All (he read all of Encyclopedia Britannica) [2], and other experiments. There are a lot of others who have done similar things. Matt Cutts from Google does 30 day…
on “The Expert in a Year Challenge” ↗