Favophobia

Peter Briffa “passes the latest meme thingy”:http://publicinterest.blogspot.com/2005/04/via-peter-cuthbertson-youre-stuck.html on to Crooked Timber. It’s a good job I never became a major celebrity (it was touch-and-go for a while there) because I am useless with these kinds of questions, and celebrities seem to get asked them all the time. I never know what my favorite _x_ (color, food, piece of music, composer, book, whatever) is; I can rarely remember the right answer to the “What’s the last …?” questions; and I can never think up a good response to the “If you only had …?” questions. This one is no different.

For instance:

_You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?_
I don’t even understand the premise of this question. Is this supposed to be a book I want to burn? A book I want to save? Why would you want to be a book (of all things) in _Fahrenheit 451_ anyway? Surely you’d rather be a TV set or something.

*Update*: A co-blogger who is much better read than me emails to explain the premise behind the question. In the novel, the rebels end up memorizing books and reciting them to each other. That makes things much clearer. Now I can confidently answer: I don’t know. Obviously not _Fahrenheit 451_, as my memory of the novel (I read it when I was 13 or 14) does not include this detail.

_Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?_
Um, no.

_What are you currently reading?_
“This goddamn thread”:http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/04/lire_le_capital.html about the labor theory of value on Brad DeLong’s blog made me go back and look at Robert Paul Wolff’s “Understanding Capital”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691022313/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/, Duncan Foley’s “Understanding Capital”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674920880/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/ (notice the pattern here) and Maurice Dobb’s “Theories of Value and Distribution Since Adam Smith”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521099366/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/. These are three excellent books. The issue they treat is fascinating in the same way that, e.g., a big red button labeled “Do Not Push This Button” is fascinating, and absorbing in the way that, e.g., a giant squid-like alien’s stomach is absorbing.

_The last book you bought is:_
“Origins of the European Economy”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521661021/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/ by Michael McCormick. I wish I could say that buying this book has increased the probability I will read it, but “past experience”:https://crookedtimber.org/2003/12/16/books-i-did-not-read-this-year tells me this is not the case.

_The last book you read:_
I think the last novel I read all the way through was “Something Rotten”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0670033596/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/ by Jasper Fforde. Pretty disappointing in comparison to the first two in that series. And I think the last non-fiction book I read all the way through was “The Internationalization of the Palace Wars”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226144267/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/ by Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth.

_Five books you would take to a deserted island:_
Sorry, no idea. Am I ever coming back from this island? I know you’re supposed to choose some great classic of world literature, but frankly I’d probably go insane within a couple of months anyway and I can’t imagine Proust would do anything to stave that off. Does my PowerBook count? Maybe there’ll be wireless access.