I loved this book. I took it to the beach with me to read last October, and kept laughing out loud and reading parts of it to my friend, who probably thought I was a little crazy. For me, the book was not only funny and entertaining, but also informative and thoughtful.

Like the author, I had a rather secular upbringing, and grew up to become an agnostic. Like the author, I too had an “Uncle Gil,” a religious fanatic who married my aunt, and who was thought by most of the family to take religion way too seriously, and who was a source of unending fascination for me.

For the author, “The Year of Living Biblically” means devoting a whole year of his life to studying the entire Bible and living out every commandment of God as literally as possible. From the ridiculous to the sublime, from stoning an adulterer (by throwing some pebbles at him) to learning how to pray, the author reads from Genesis through Revelation, travels from the Wailing Wall to an Amish farm, and consults an assortment of theologians, rabbis, ministers, a real shepherd, snake handlers, and even his Uncle Gil, as he tries to understand and live the Bible. I loved the stories he tells, and still find myself retelling some of them.

For me, living Biblically has lately meant starting to read the Bible again for the first time since childhood, attempting to live the Biblical commandments as I understand them, and worshipping regularly with a congregation. The latter activity is one the author seldom tried, which seems like a strange omission to me, since I have come to believe it is one of the most important Biblical practices. But that aside, the author’s year-long experiment changes him in surprising ways, and he becomes what he calls a “reverent agnostic,” by which he means

...whether or not there is a God, there is such a thing as sacredness—there is something transcendent beyond the everyday. It’s possible humans created this sacredness ourselves, but that doesn’t take away from its power or importance.