every once in a while, you find two of your favorite things come together to create something better, like bacon and chocolate. and then once in a blue moon, you get three of your favorite things. this is that moment for me – books, design, and interviews, all rolled into one fabulous project: The Proust Questionnaire Book Edition. the folks at designers & books decided to create their own version of the proust questionnaire, focusing their questions solely on books and inviting designers to contribute.
below are a few of my favorite responses. i wholeheartedly agree with Tina Roth Eisenberg’s shout-out to big rabbit’s bad mood and laughed out loud at Michael Bierut’s response about Foucault (having been subjected to that book in several grad school courses.) and i love the straightforward responses from Peter Eisenman, Adrian Shaughnessy, and Inge Sempe.
enjoy!
Your favorite childhood book (or favorite childhood author):
The Wind in the Willows. The first book I read in one sitting. (Angus Hyland)
Didn’t read. (Peter Eisenman)
Your favorite book character:
The Bad Mood Monster in Big Rabbit’s Bad Mood by Ramona Badescu. (Tina Roth Eisenberg)
Your favorite book title (because you like the sound of it):
On Bullshit (Sagi Haviv)
A book you could never finish:
Moby Dick. I am stuck at page 465. (Nicholas Blechman)
I used to feel a sense of shame if I didn’t finish a book, even if it was a slog to read. That feeling has passed. I now dip in and out of books, and no longer feel like a criminal. (Adrian Shaughnessy)
A book you will never start:
I look at my shelves and I see more books than I could read if I lived to be 100. So naming all the books that I will never read is too big a task for here and now. But, there is no greater joy than finding that a book that has lain unread for years has suddenly become useful. When that happens I feel a wave of mild euphoria. (Adrian Shaughnessy)
Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault. I just don’t think I’m ever going to be in the mood. (Michael Bierut)
The best “book as object” you own (how it looks over what it says):
Ford Treasury of Station Wagon Living. I do not want to live in a station wagon, but this book is persuasive—a 16-inch-thick (not kidding) dictionary covered in corduroy from the mid-1800s. (Todd Oldham)
Your most idiosyncratic reading habit:
Reading massive Victorian novels (think Trollope) on my phone in the middle of the night. (Julie Lasky)
If you are what you read, the book that best says who you are:
I am not what I read—that’s why I read. (Inga Sempé)