It's All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree by A.J. Jacobs

From the publisher: A.J. Jacobs has received some strange emails over the years, but this note was perhaps the strangest: “You don’t know me, but I’m your eighth cousin. And we have over 80,000 relatives of yours in our database.”

That’s enough family members to fill Madison Square Garden four times over. Who are these people, A.J. wondered, and how do I find them? So began Jacobs’s three-year adventure to help build the biggest family tree in history.

Jacobs’s journey would take him to all seven continents. He drank beer with a US president, found himself singing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and unearthed genetic links to Hollywood actresses and real-life scoundrels. After all, we can choose our friends, but not our family.

“Whether he’s posing as a celebrity, outsourcing his chores, or adhering strictly to the Bible, we love reading about the wacky lifestyle experiments of author A.J. Jacobs” (Entertainment Weekly). Now Jacobs upends, in ways both meaningful and hilarious, our understanding of genetics and genealogy, tradition and tribalism, identity and connection. It’s All Relative is a fascinating look at the bonds that connect us all.

My thoughts: This was a really fun non-fiction read. I don't read a lot of non-fiction, though I always say I'm going to, but my favourites are the ones that read like fiction. I want to learn something, but I don't want a lot of technical jargon thrown my way. Jacobs has a fantastic writing style that made me want to keep reading because I was enjoying it so much. He's actually quite funny, too. This was an easy to read book that really kept my attention and kept me intrigued.

Learning about your relatives and genes has really blown up over the past few years, and with good reason. We all want to know where we came from. Jacobs explores how we are all technically related, which is a fun thought when you really think about it. The book talks about his plans to throw the biggest family reunion, ever, which was really fun to read about. I do wish there were more details about the actual event. There was the big lead up to it, but I wanted to read more about it. The day probably went by way too fast to really record details.

The book had a lot of fun information about families and genes and how certain factors affect families. I really enjoyed and I definitely want to check out more of Jacobs writing.