A.J. Jacobs has a new book coming out October 9 and I can’t wait to read it.  The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible chronicles the year he spent trying to follow every rule in the Bible to the letter as much as possible.

Jacobs, editor-at-large for Esquire magazine is a humorist at heart with a specialty in sarcasm (my personal favorite). He has a penchant for Plimpton-esque first person works.  Take for example his previous book The Know It All, which followed his year of trying to become the world’s smartest person.

Jacobs undertook writing the book with an open mind and an open heart. His intent was not to mock or belittle the Bible or religion.  “It was much more a journey to understand,” he said.  He began the experiment as an agnostic. At the end of the year, Jacobs was still an agnostic, but he was a “more reverent, thankful agnostic.”

The conclusions that Jacobs gleaned from his experience are interesting and insightful:

• You can’t live a sin-free life on your own. “I was able to cut down on my coveting maybe 40 percent, but I was still a coveter,” he said, noting that he lives in New York where there’s a lot of coveting.
• The “big” sins - “Thou Shalt not kill” etc - didn’t give him a problem.  What tripped him up were “the sins we commit every day like lying, gossiping and coveting.”
• He was surprised to find the Bible was not outdated. “I was taken aback by how relevant many of the Bible’s rules are to modern life.”
• Through the experience, he found a new perspective on life. He learned to concentrate on “the hundred little things that go right in a day, instead of the three or four things that go wrong. There’s a lot about gratefulness in the Bible, and I would say I’m more thankful.”

More information about A.J. Jacobs and his books is available on his site.  Click here to check out his blog.