Before I begin my review, I’d like to mention the most recent Supreme Court case. It involved, among other things, a number of suits and some drawings. And I learned that the acronym for the Supreme Court is SCOTUS, which is rad. I have nothing further to say about that. However, since no one (except me) can stand a non-sequitor, here you go: SCOTUS was founded on the idea of Justice. Justice is doing what’s right. The right thing for you to do is to go read AJ Jacobs’ new book Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection.
“Why should I read it?” you might ask.
Why should I suffer the questions of fools? Just do it.
“Why? Did you read the book?”
Of course not. If there’s one thing I like less than writing articles, it’s reading books. A couple of years ago, however, I accidentally found myself reading one of Mr. Jacob’s earlier works, something about how he read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica while only wearing cotton and obeying the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus and joining Mensa. After I got over the paradox of how one could accidentally start reading a book, I found myself enjoying it immensely. I find myself enjoying this immensely, I thought.
(My editor has just informed me that these are actually two of Mr. Jacobs’s earlier books, The Year of Living Biblically and The-Know-It-All. My editor thinks I just combined the topics in my head. Well, Mr. Smarty-pants Editor, it’s only one book if you glue the covers together.)
Anyway, this one book of his was quite engaging. It had some similarities to other books, but there were also differences. If you could imagine a book written by a man, it might be like this book, but also maybe not. If I could describe it in one word, it would be “pigeon.” Hmm, this isn’t working. Maybe an example would be helpful, but copyright infringement, blah blah blah, I’m too lazy to look one up. Instead, I’ll make up a nice anecdote which models Mr. Jacobs’s approach: “Then, on Tuesday, I went to get a vasectomy. Boy, anesthesia is fun – reminds me of my days doing ecstasy at Brown. On Wednesday, I tried to conceive a child with my put upon wife (I mean, I didn’t cut my beard for a whole year). It didn’t work. This taught me that a vasectomy is not a male enhancement procedure. But it’s good that I went through with it, because otherwise I couldn’t possibly have learned this with the same level of authenticity.” See, a perfect example of how Mr. Jacobs is able to draw beautiful life lessons from his little experiments.
But really, it was actually a very fine book. Mr. Jacobs has done a superb job of exploiting the market niche made up of those who prefer reading about other people’s interesting/embarrassing adventures to doing these things themselves. Preliminary analysis indicates that this niche is composed of all literate people between the ages of 10 and dead. This has worked out well for Mr. Jacobs. He no longer has to work nights and weekends as a high school chemistry teacher who got cancer and started cooking meth so that his family wouldn’t go broke after he died. As you can imagine, this was a grueling part time job.
This is the point: I haven’t read his new book, but you should. Allegedly, he wrote it while walking on a treadmill. You should one up him – read it while swimming. At least that way it won’t be dry.
Looking for something to eat while reading? They might not be the healthiest, but Maria Sengenberger has some suggestions.
Comments
Powered by Facebook Comments