The back of A.J. Jacob’s book, “The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible,” coins the book as being “part CliffNotes to the Bible, part memoir, and part look into worlds unimaginable.” It also says that it’s “laugh out loud funny and enlightening”. I’d give all that a solid maybe. How delightfully vague of me. lawl
Naw, but seriously, I kid. I just kinda wanted to put some silly shit there because I’m enamored by a hypothetical situation where A.J. Jacobs randomly Googles his name, sees a result of me talking shit and chokes on his damaged esteem. For the record, the book was a fun read and it really did seem kind of like a CliffNotes to the bible. A.J. himself is a pretty self-centered guy. Not to make him look like a douche bag, but I felt his personality kind of kept me from calling this book great versus good. The whole time I was reading it, there were moments where I was getting really into what was going on. Kind of like running a pen by a magnet and feeling a bit of a pull. Nothing exceptionally significant, but definitely a noticeable tug. Well I’d start to get this feeling and then I’d read a bit more into A.J. and I start to lose a sense of sincerity in his actions and words.
I think sometime after the start of his section on the New Testament he gets an e-mail from some guy who criticizes him. While a bit rude, I think the guy pretty much put my reluctance to enjoy the book as much as I could into perspective. He writes to A.J., “It is through being in Christ and following Him that we become transformed. Unless one takes this step, one cannot be truly transformed. So after your year is over, you will go back to being a man who finds purpose in weird projects and writing assignments.” Context aside, the guy makes a point. This book is essentially a paycheck, some royalties and a leap towards fame garnering. Not that there is something wrong with that, most of us are trying to get that ball rolling ourselves, but it just kills the glow that this book could have had. I think it can be akin to two children hearing long Christmas stories about Santa Clause with one thinking he’s real and the other one knowing he’s not. In both cases the kids are enjoying story time, but you know one is getting a better experience.
The book was still a fun read, and I enjoyed the little bits here and there at an educational level. I’m usually not a fan of non-fiction so may that be a testament to A.J.’s writing, but I dunno, I’m just kind of down in that I-wanna-believe kind of way after reading “Living Biblically: Long Subtitle”. I look forward to reading some of his other books, but the topic of religion is just something that can’t be half-hearted for the sake of doing something amusing. Touching on that, I think another reason the book kind of bothers me is that it kind of got me feeling a little less secular these days. I mean, would I be bringing this shit up if it didn’t matter to me? Man, that’s weird.
Oh, I don’t know where I’m going with this post, but I’ve been ADDing my ass off and on it and it’s gotten late. I might continue this later, but probably not.
This entry was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 1:09 am and is filed under Another Blog, Literature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
