Opinion | ‘What’s Your Favorite Book?’ Is Not a Trick Question

Compare the snickers at Ms. Abrams’s writing to the response to Pete Buttigieg’s reading. Mr. Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., Democratic presidential aspirant and current shiny new thing, told reporters that he learned Norwegian to read more from an author he’d discovered, whose work was not available in translation. Then he put James Joyce’s “Ulysses” at the top of 10 books he’d take to a desert island. Some people rolled their eyes at this; the literati swiftly leapt to his defense, some saying they’d rather reread Joyce than attempt a graphic novel.

When a politician or other public figure is asked to list his or her favorite books, it’s never just a list. It’s an answer to the question, Who do I want people to think I am?

Clearly, Mr. Buttigieg wants us to know that he is smart. “Ulysses” is a great book, a book that is firmly ensconced in the canon, but probably doesn’t end up in a lot of beach bags. I am ready to concede that Mr. Buttigieg is an outlier, a man who truly enjoys “Ulysses” and expects that other readers will dig it, but it is not a book that many people read for fun.

So what does it say when progressives are putting a difficult, forbidding book, and the candidate who praises it, on a pedestal while, at the same time, we’re laughing at the books that many, many readers enjoy and using steamy, context-free snippets to take the women who write them down a peg or two?

At this point you may be asking: Isn’t it better to have politicians who read hard books than a president who doesn’t read at all?

And the answer is yes. Of course. Absolutely. It is appalling to me that the man in the White House seems to read absolutely nothing — not literature, not best sellers, not his security briefings, not even, if his co-authors can be believed, the books he has ostensibly written. I dearly miss President Barack Obama’s summer reading lists and the glimpse they gave us into his mind.

But let’s be honest: If President Trump doesn’t like to read and can’t come up with a book to recommend, that makes him pitiable to much of literary Twitter. It also makes him totally relatable to a lot of America.