I really loved this book. Interactive, investigative journalism is my favorite. I love when people immerse themselves in the story, or try to live that life for a set period of time. AJ Jacobs is the king of doing just that. He's written two previous books: The Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It-All, which I have yet to read, but I'm pretty sure I will. The Guinea Pig Diaries is a book of essays that could stand alone, but some call back to previous experiments. I think most were originally published as articles, but I like having them all combined here. Jacobs did some interesting experiments, like pretending to be a girl on an online dating site (filtering results for his kid's nanny), outsourcing work, daily tasks, errands - everything - to companies in India, and posing as a lesser-known celebrity at the Oscars. He does each experiment for a month. I'll admit, there were a few I wanted to try... Being brutally honest? Sounds difficult, not to mention dangerous. Focusing on being a "unitasker" instead of a multitasker.

The only one I kind of had a problem with, and therefore skimmed over, was the chapter about living by George Washington's rules. The idea itself was fine, but Jacobs couldn't keep himself from getting preachy. He spent several paragraphs praising Obama, saying he already seems like he'll be as honorable as Washington, blah blah blah. I know it's Jacobs' book, and he can say what he wants, but it alienated me, and affected the way I read the rest of the book. I think it should have at least been scaled back, if not removed completely. I'm sure the vast majority of his readership would agree with him, but he was so preachy and just wouldn't shut up about it, and it seemed a bit of a stretch to me, since this was written before Obama had been in the office for very long. But now I'm the one ranting, so I'll stop.