What I've been reading

I have built up this huge list of over 200 to-be read books on a excel sheet and every day, its building up like global warming. I tried in vain to emulate Tyler Cowen reading 8 books at a time but gave up after it was driving me insane and Max was pissed. So reading this book which is not part of my backlog made little sense. Couple of weeks ago, I was eyeing this book in the library, which had this very catchy title but having led by confirmation bias, I deduced it must be one of these quirky comedy central crap. Nevertheless, the grey matter made a concrete note to read it soon which eventually led me to pick it up last weekend.

The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment by A.J.Jacobs is an awesome book. I had a hectic week (result of avoiding multitasking) and this book came as a rescue. A.J's book had so many similarities with my life and to be precise lot of what happening now in life. Before you deduce it as my absolute recency effect, I have this blog for rescue and witness.

A.J goes around experimenting on some of the stuff which we don't practice but like to believe we do, unconsciously hoping it will be a self fulling prophecy.

• My favorite project was his Rationality project (of-course!) and you bet its hilarious. Its kind of the stuff I have been trying to do (in a less hilarious and more boring way) , like getting rid of my cognitive dissonance et al (here, here and probably rest of my life). Complete wiki list here.
• Practicing George Washington's "Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation" is another project I love. My respect for the first president grew, ever since I read about it in one of David Brooks columns and I wanted to practice those too. To be honest some on the list are incongruous but most of it is timeless. 
• Other project is "Project Truth", its astonishing how easily we slip into other mode every day. Born in India et al, I tried to practice Gandhi's my experiments with truth and I have got into troubled waters doing so. I have seen too many people growing up in India who led a Gandhi-an way of life only to be ridiculed by the society.(especially when the language becomes non-colloquial). AJ's project is more on removing the filter between the brain and mouth.
• Avoiding multitasking was another project. It was bang on target since this was the first week I had decide to avoid multitasking (it was more or less slowly killing me). When it comes to Max, I have to multitask and I am not getting rid of that habit when it comes to him. The point is except in shower and natural calls, we need each other and which for him translates to non-non-stop playing.
• Some of his other projects in the book (like posing naked of magazine) are completely out of my league and dont want to pursue not even in my wildest dreams.
  
• Other eerie thing was A.J mentions about HBO miniseries on John Adams.  Coincidentally, I got the DVD set this week and was in process of debating whether to watch it or not (its over 9 hours). Now, I am in the middle of 2nd DVD and loving it!!
• Last year's article about Patternicity on scientific american is one of favorites and I tend to use it all the time to avoid lured by any juicy conspiracy theories.
• Did I mention we share great deal of books which probably explains the obsession with rationality and finding an explanation for everything and that obession with metacognition too!!

Its such a relief reading this book since it gives sense of security there are other nut cases, worse than me searching for rationality and making sense of each and everything. I feel lucky for not having it to do that for a living unlike A.J. Hmm but then why am I feeling jealous of A.J? I think its because he is reinstating what Max has been trying to teach me - the process of pursuit of happiness has to be fun else well duh!!