The Guinea Pig Diares (A.K.A. My Life As An Experiment)

The Guinea Pig Diaries (re-titled My Life As An Experiment)

By A.J. Jacobs

4/5 stars

Review by: Marina

This is the third book by A.J. Jacobs that I have read.  Normally I’m not a huge nonfiction reader, but since I finished with school I’ve found a little more time in my life for it.  Previously I read his books A Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It All, about living by ALL the bible’s rules for a year and spending a year reading the Encyclopedia Britannica for a year, respectively.  I thoroughly enjoyed Jacobs’ writing in both these books as well as his anecdotes about his experiments.  I’m frankly a little surprised it took me so long to pick up his third book- The Guinea Pig Diares which also seems to be retitled to My Life As An Experiment  according to his website and a recent search on Amazon.  This book, like his previous two, also follows a year of his life, however, this time he takes on 10 different experiments (not at the same time) over the course of the year.  Everything from doing everything his wife tells him, to living like George Washington, to outsourcing his life.  His writing is humorous and engaging and I was thoroughly fascinated in every experiment- in fact some of them I kind of want to try myself!  The only drawback I found to the book is in the narrating of the audiobook which I found somewhat annoying at times, however, the book itself was enough to pull me through the mediocre narration.