Saturday, July 28, 2012

Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection; A.J. Jacobs


Author:  A.J Jacobs
Publication Year: 2012
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Audio
Edition: audiobook 
Reader: read by author (good)
Source: publisher
Date Completed: July/2012
Rating: 3.5/5
Recommend: yes- with reservations


This was the first book I've read / listened to by this author. To me, it sounded like a book that would deal with healthy eating and exercising in a humorous way.  Although some parts were interesting and other parts made my chuckle, overall I was left with the impression that there was not much in this book that I could walk away with or try as I felt most of what I read couldn't be given much weight or merit.

The author's goal with his undertaking was to improve his body -- in a period of (2) years with the goal of "being the healthiest man in the world."  The problem as I see it was that he never tried any one thing long enough, be it eating or exercise plans, to be able to really evaluate the results.  Some of the things he tried were only tried for a few days or a week: juice fasts, veganism, raw food diets.

Although I was was hoping for more substance, I did like the message I took away once I finished listening -- don't miss out on what life has to offer in the process of attempting to be "the healthiest man alive."

6 comments:

  1. Interesting. I read a couple of his other books and although I enjoyed the first one, I got kind of tired of his "try xyz for a year" routine pretty quickly. This may be why - it just doesn't go deep enough into any one subject.

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  2. I love this type of memoir so I'm looking forward to this book.

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  3. I read another review of this one by JoAnn's daughter who thought it was more humorous than helpful too!

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  4. Yeah, I am not sure one can evaluate the merits of one diet plan over another if there is only one week of trying it out! It does seem like this might be an interesting way to get the information that is needed for someone who is curious, but not someone who is ultra serious in trying out a new diet plan.

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  5. This is not his best book for the reasons you state. I would have liked him to stick with stuff longer. I mean he read the Encyclopedia Brittanica for an entire year so I think he could have done more than he did. Still, he is funny.

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  6. What's funny is that I've seen several people planning to read this book, and then haven't seen their reviews of it, making me wonder if it was one that was started and then set aside. I have the audio checked out from the library, but I just have too many other books going right now to spend the time on it.

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