The Year of Living Biblically by A. J. Jacobs

★★★★☆

From the bestselling author of The Know-It-All comes a fascinating and timely exploration of religion and the Bible.

Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst and attempt to obey the Bible as literally as possible for one full year. He vows to follow the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multiply. To love his neighbor. But also to obey the hundreds of less publicized rules: to avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibers; to play a ten-string harp; to stone adulterers.

The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal and will make you see history's most influential book with new eyes.

Jacobs's quest transforms his life even more radically than the year spent reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica for The Know-It-All. His beard grows so unruly that he is regularly mistaken for a member of ZZ Top. He immerses himself in prayer, tends sheep in the Israeli desert, battles idolatry, and tells the absolute truth in all situations - much to his wife's chagrin.

Throughout the book, Jacobs also embeds himself in a cross-section of communities that take the Bible literally. He tours a Kentucky-based creationist museum and sings hymns with Pennsylvania Amish. He dances with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and does Scripture study with Jehovah's Witnesses. He discovers ancient biblical wisdom of startling relevance. And he wrestles with seemingly archaic rules that baffle the twenty-first-century brain. Jacobs's extraordinary undertaking yields unexpected epiphanies and challenges. A book that will charm readers both secular and religious, The Year of Living Biblically is part Cliff Notes to the Bible, part memoir, and part look into worlds unimaginable. Thou shalt not be able to put it down.

My sister lent me her copy of The Year of Living Biblically, so technically I didn't read it on my Nook!  (I will say, it takes me much longer to finish a paper book than when I'm reading on my Nook.  :)  )  Anyways, I really enjoyed this book!  The author, who was born Jewish but is an agnostic, decides that he will immerse himself in the Bible for an entire year, and that he will follow it as literally as possible.  This book recounts his experiences.  I liked that he was coming into this 'project' with no preconceived notions about religion or what the Bible says.  He was really reading it for the first time and interpreting it without many outside influences.  Along the way, he meets with many members of the Jewish and Christian faith, some of them extremists.  Some of his experiences are hilarious, and it's funny to read about his wife's reactions to some of the stuff he does over the course of the year.  He came away from this experience a different person than the guy he started as.  This was really an enjoyable, funny, and insightful read!