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Flippin’ Friday: The Guinea Pig Diaries

Another Friday, another alliterative title.  I’d go with Fiction Friday, but the book in question falls under non-fiction.  So Flippin’ it is.

(True, I may’ve written this post on Tuesday night, and I didn’t have an idea for Foney Friday, but the two things don’t have anything to do with each other.  Also not a factor was my intention to post every day this week.)

Sometimes, even though I have a backlog of books checked out from the Library, a new one will displace all others.  Given that A.J. Jacobs’s previous book, The Year of Living Biblically, was one of my favorites of 2008 (in fact, my favorite nonfiction title), new titles from him now get a bump in priority.

His latest, The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment, was every bit as entertaining and hilarious as Year was, if not as consistently worthwhile.  Part of what made Year so charming was the subject matter.  And while it was occasionally crude-ish, the fact of it being about the Bible seemed to temper any such tendencies.

In the new book, the excellent writing and wit are still there.  The subjects just aren’t as solid, and the writing is a bit more, well, colorful.  More colorful metaphors, as Mr. Spock would say.  It’s not so much a criticism as a parental advisory.

Even if the subjects weren’t as worthwhile, that doesn’t mean they weren’t interesting.  The list of topics (and my nutshell explanation for each) went like this:

1. My Life as a Beautiful Woman – average man experiences power while posing as a lovely lady online.
2. My Outsourced Life – man enjoys paying folks in India to do stuff in his place.
3. I Think You’re Fat – Radical Honesty giveth and taketh away.
4. 240 Minutes of Fame – when you look like someone famous, it’s fun for a while.
5. The Rationality Project – engaging the brain where it’s normally idle.
6. The Truth About Nakedness – how it feels to post nude.  Did I really need to write that?  (edit: slightly Freudian typo there on "post."  Of course I meant to write "pose."  And for the record, I still had my PJ's on when I posted.)
7. What Would George Washington Do? – applying GW’s 110 Rules of Civility to modern life.
8. The Unitasker – One activity at a time, please…
9. Whipped – Yes, dear.

My favorite chapter was The Rationality Project, because there really are many ways we coast through life without really thinking things through.  The Appendix also had a list of Cognitive Biases that was pretty enlightening.  For instance, we tend to remember things we don’t like and correlate them as always happening.  (This probably explains why I think Elaine’s always just bought a purse when she tells me she’s looking for a new one.)

The Unitasker was also a good one, because I realize how rarely my brain is doing just one thing.  One of the reasons I’m not a big fan of swimming as exercise is that I can’t listen to audio books while doing it.  Even now I’m listening to a radio program.  Focus can be good.  Especially when trying to, you know, interact with people.

The most “Duh” chapter was the one on Radical Honesty, where basically adults throw off all the restrictions of polite conversation and revert to being three and a half years old in the way they talk.  Bluntness and openness can be good things when applied with care.  But most of the time, we’re better off zipping it.  I figure that, most of the time, my thoughts aren't really worth sharing.

So, in summary, I enjoyed the new book very much indeed, it made me laugh out loud quite a few times.  I just liked the earlier book better.  But I'll still bump his next book to the top of my list.