Looking for a Challenge? (Nonfiction)

You might have heard of the book (later a movie) Julie & Julia, Julie Powell's yearlong quest to cook everything in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I. What an undertaking! While this endeavor may seem extraordinary, Powell is not the only person to have taken on a quest of this scale. Interested in more? There are plenty of other crazy (and often inspiring) quests to chose from, from religion to travel to self-improvement. The following are just a few of the highlights.

Who among us has not dreamed of knowing everything? In The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, A.J. Jacobs relates the story of his year spent reading the unabridged Encyclopaedia Britannica. The result (organized in alphabetical order, of course) is humorous and highly indicative of human nature. Along the same vein, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages is just what it sounds like. Author Ammon Shea spends a year reading all twenty volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary. This is a more literate, but equally entertaining read. Finally, for something on a more manageable scale, Susan Hill spent her year reading the unread books in her personal library in Howards End is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home. She comes by some personal revelations along the way.

Too much literature? Others turned to travel and self-improvement quests. In The Geography of Bliss Eric Weiner travels the world looking to find out what places and activities make people happy. Similar in style to Bill Bryson (At Home, A Walk in the Woods), Bliss is a highly subjective but informative travelogue. Also on the trail of happiness is Gretchen Rubin, who spends a year trying to improve her life in manageable ways in The New York Times bestseller The Happiness Project. Also setting out to achieve happiness is John Kralik, who works his way out of a bad time in his life by sending out a thank you note a day for a year in 365 Thank Yous. What began as a simple project turns into a positive life transformation.

Others tried to improve their lives by taking more drastic measures. In The 100 Thing Challenge, author Dave Bruno decides to simplify his life by reducing his possessions to 100 items. His success has inspired others to do the same. Angered by the bestseller Nickel and Dimed, a bleak account of minimum-wage life in America, Adam Shepard sets out to prove that the American Dream is possible. He takes a few clothes, a sleeping bag, and $25 and sets a goal of working his way out of homelessness in one year. Find out what happened in the resulting book Scratch Beginnings.

Finally, if you are looking for something a little different, other authors have written about religion. Suffering from a crisis of faith, Benyamin Cohen heads to the Bible Belt to try to regain his Jewish faith in My Jesus Year. Quaker-born Kevin Roose decides to immerse himself in Christianity by studying at Liberty University and see what happens in the highly readable The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University. Taking the quest more literally is A.J. Jacobs (author of the above mentioned Know-It-All), who spends a year trying to follow the word of the Bible as closely as possible in The Year of Living Biblically.