Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Drop Dead Healthy

A.J. Jacobs has attracted (and kept) my attention before with The Know-It-All, a book about his journey reading through the entire Encyclopedia Britannica.  Sounds boring, right?  But it's not. A logical initial reaction to the concept would be, oh great, this guy takes the information and begrudgingly regurgitates it word for word, one boring statistic after another. Actually, that couldn't be farther from the truth.  In his books, A.J. tells a story, mostly the story of his life, while on the side, providing new interesting facts on the specific subject at hand. Genius. But after all, he's Mensa.

Well, this spring, A.J. brought us a new treat - Drop Dead Healthy. Again, part of the joy in reading his books is his certain style, and that he tends to go to extremes. So here, he declares that he is going to be the healthiest man in the world. Quite the quest, huh? It's hilarious.

The book is full of interesting tidbits like eye exercises, hand exercises, and those that obsess over them. He tries the caveman diet and the cleanse diet.  He provides us with reasoning as to why we shouldn't make our beds in the morning (although I can't help but still do it).

My husband has already made his way through A.J.'s The Year of Living Biblically, which I'm sure is pretty self-explanatory. It is on my ever-expanding list of "must reads" that seems to continue to grow no matter how many cover to cover sessions I attempt. Still, I find that any A.J. Jacobs book is one worth finding the time and "dropping" into.