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

A. J. Jacobs
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (87 customer reviews)

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This Book Is Bound with "Deckle Edge" Paper
You may have noticed that some of our books are identified as "deckle edge" in the title. Deckle edge books are bound with pages that are made to resemble handmade paper by applying a frayed texture to the edges. Deckle edge is an ornamental feature designed to set certain titles apart from books with machine-cut pages. See a larger image.

Book Description

September 8, 2009
The uproarious New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It-All gathers his adventures as a human guinea pig into one of the funniest and most enlightening books of the year.

• An irresistible page-turner filled with surprising wisdom: For his first hit book, Jacobs read the Encyclopedia Britannica. For his second, he followed every single rule in the Bible. Now comes a collection of his most outrageous and thought-provoking experiments yet. In The Guinea Pig Diaries, Jacobs goes undercover as a beautiful woman. He outsources everything in his life to India, from answering his emails to arguing with his wife. He spends two months saying whatever is on his mind. He lives like George Washington. Plus several other life-changing experiments—one of which involves public nudity.

• Amazing sales record: The humor of A.J. Jacobs has produced sales that are anything but laughable. His books have more than half a million copies in print, and they have spent a combined twenty-nine weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists and counting. He has inspired many imitators, but none has matched his ability to combine side-splitting entertainment with profound life lessons.

• A media favorite: To promote his books, Jacobs has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, the Today show, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper 360, Conan O’Brien, and NPr’s Fresh Air. Jacobs is all over the Internet as well, from Slate to the Huffington Post to Playboy.com. He is a regular contributor to NPR’s Weekend Edition. And he’s the editor-at-large at Esquire magazine, where versions of some of these experiments have appeared.


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The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment + Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection + The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Having already read the Encyclopedia Britannica from cover-to-cover (The Know-It-All) and spent a year living by every rule in the Bible (The Year of Living Biblically), Jacobs, a kind of latter-day George Plimpton, tests our patience and our funny bones once again with his smart-aleck, off-the-wall and uproarious experiments in living. No cross-dresser he, Jacobs lives a vicarious life as a beautiful woman, the experiment growing out of his role in persuading his son's nanny, Michelle—a stunning beauty—to participate in an online dating service. He signs her up for the site, creates a profile for her, sifts through her suitors and co-writes her e-mails. Pretending to be Michelle, he learns not only the regret of rejection (having to let some guys down), but he also predictably discovers that there's a lot of deceit, boasting and creepiness in Internet dating. In another experiment, Jacobs outsources everything in his life to a company in India, from his research for articles to a complaint letter to American Airlines. This experiment worked so well that he continues to use this company every few weeks to make car rental reservations or to do research for him. Although a coda of reflection follows the tale of each experiment, they provide no clarity or wisdom about his experiences. Everybody plays the fool sometimes, and with this book, Jacobs seems to have made a career out of it. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“Jacobs’ experiments are about understanding oneself, making life more interesting and showing the reader a good time. And I love them for it.”San Francisco Chronicle

"Both laugh-out-loud funny and enlightening.” —People



“Inspired and inspiring.”Vanity Fair

“Off-the-wall and uproarious.”Publishers Weekly

"The virtuoso of this self-as-guinea pig genre."—Brad Tuttle, Time

"We love reading about the lifestyle experiments of author A.J. Jacobs."Entertainment Weekly

"Both laugh-out-loud funny and enlightening."People

"Over the years, [Jacobs' experiments] have grown more complex and deeper in potential meaning. Not to mention funnier and funnier."The Kansas City Star

"[T]he most enlightening moments are driven by his honesty, his sense of humor, and his willingness to constantly challenge his ingrained assumptions.... Hilarity, and quite a bit of learning, ensue.... In [My Life as an Experiment], he once again achieves a rare literary balance–an intellectual study of human behavior that will make readers laugh out loud or, in the more daring cases, inspire them to try one of these experiments for themselves."Providence Journal

"He's not just in it for the yuks–though there are plenty of yuks. (He's very funny.) He has a curious, questioning mind and is always looking for larger meaning.... [My Live as an Experiment] is intelligent, insightful shtick."Minneapolis Star-Tribune


Product Details

  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (September 8, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1416599061
  • ISBN-13: 978-1416599067
  • Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (87 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #635,098 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A.J. Jacobs is the editor of What It Feels Like and the author of The Two Kings: Jesus and Elvis and America Off-Line. He is the senior editor of Esquire and has written for The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Glamour, New York magazine, New York Observer, and other publications.

Customer Reviews

A.J. Jacobs is the thinking person's Walter Mitty. Bookreporter  |  21 reviewers made a similar statement
I was laughing out loud while reading this next to the pool on vacation. HD NYC  |  13 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
58 of 63 people found the following review helpful
Format: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.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A.J. Jacobs is the thinking person's Walter Mitty September 14, 2009
Format:Hardcover
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 Encyclopćdia 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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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars funny, not as good as his other two books September 30, 2009
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
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
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Collage required
My daughter needed this for a collage project she said she was glad you had it for us to buy
Published 2 months ago by mrsfred
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Satire
AJ Jacobs is hilarious as he examines several different topics. I listened to it on CD and it is read by Jacobs and his voice inflections are a great bonus.
Published 3 months ago by T R Crighton
3.0 out of 5 stars Not his best
I have read many of Jacobs' books, and this is my least favorite. I miss the continuity of his other books. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Emily Tingle
4.0 out of 5 stars Love AJ Jacobs!
Enjoyed this book almost as much as The Year of Living Bibically...AJ is a clever writer and the book is a fun, fairly quick read.
Published 4 months ago by Jennifer Castricone
1.0 out of 5 stars Cute but boring
Jacobs tries to play off his previous successes but to me, this comes across as a poor attempt at humour.
Published 4 months ago by Inquisitive learner
5.0 out of 5 stars To reread
Humor that doesn't hit you over the head. Subtle. Personal tales that make the reader feel really a part of the experiment. Well-written, interesting, amusing.
Published 5 months ago by Jonathan
5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious
Love A.J. Jacobs writing style and topics! I wouldn't hesitate to read his other books. Really a very funny book.
Published 6 months ago by Goldilocks
5.0 out of 5 stars So likable and compelling
I'd say this is my new favourite A.J. Jacobs book but I suspect I may say that after every A.J. Jacobs book, regardless of what order I read them in. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Mary Lavers
5.0 out of 5 stars Thoroughly enjoyable!
I have to admire someone so willing to bare his soul and laugh at himself. He can take something seriously and take himself not-so-seriously at the same time. Read more
Published 9 months ago by PeachieMom
5.0 out of 5 stars You Need to Experiment with this Book!
Life is an experiment in and of itself. Whether it's when we fall in love, attend college, or have kids, each event brings a new and exciting adventure. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Kalie Lyn
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