Belle tags me (and co-blogger Sudeep) with this book-meme.

1. One book that changed your life?

The obvious if slightly misleading answer is Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. I was never a true-blue Objectivist (I didn't even know what one was for years after reading Rand) but The Fountainhead led me to discover my first real best friend, and also to discover the joy of arguing about every philosophical issue with somebody very smart until one of you had agreed that the other one was right.

Until sometime when I was in college, we only had two outstanding disagreements-- one about whether or not it was semantically possible to have "too much" fun (I said yes. He said no-- once fun became "too much" it was by definition not fun anymore); the other was about whether or not anything could be more boring than sleep (I said yes, interesting-ness was measured on an unbounded scale from negative numbers to positive ones, with unconsciousness defined at zero. He said no, unconsciousness didn't have an interestingness value of zero, it had an undefined value, and my attempt to stick it on a scale was an attempt to deny the nothingness of unconsciousness.)

What all this had to do with The Fountainhead itself is slightly unclear, which is what I meant when I said the answer was slightly misleading. But we wouldn't have been friends if I hadn't told him that he shouldn't read the book because he wouldn't get it, and if he hadn't read it anyway, then told me that he was rather offended that I had thought he wouldn't.

2. One book you have read more than once?

Well of course there are lots. The obvious top two are Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing and Vladimir Nabokov's Ada, both of which I own in so many well-thumbed copies that some of my roommates have thought me to be practically certifiable.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?

I had a plan, upon arriving at law school, to sit down and read the entire U.S. Code. It sounds silly, but I thought that if I had just read all of the statutes at least once, I would have a vague geographical understanding of what there was to know, and could build from there. This never really got off the ground, and the U.S. Code probably fails to qualify as "one book" because it is in so many volumes. I think I'd have to go with the complete works of William Shakespeare, instead.

4. One book that made you laugh?

Syrup, by Maxx Barry. People seem to have slowly discovered Jennifer Government, his second novel, which was good in a you've-made-your-point sort of way, but Syrup was the original and probably untoppable mark of comic genius, marred only by the fact that the last fifteen pages aren't executed with the same vicious mercy as the rest of the book. The hardcover, with the original dust-jacket, is best.

5. One book that made you cry?

If there is one, I can't remember it; the aforementioned Ada and The Real Thing have come the closest, but that is also because in moments of emotional vulnerability I tend to reach for them. Maybe the collected poems of e.e. cummings, for a similar reason.

6. One book you wish had been written?

Harry Kalven's A Worthy Tradition-- the final word on the First Amendment from one of the greatest doctrinalists of any era. Technically, there is an extant version, but it is hard to tell from reading it what parts are really Kalven's and what parts are the heroic editorial touchups of his son and of Owen Fiss. Not that the book isn't good, but my biographical fascination with Kalven is sufficiently strong that I'd rather have his version.

UPDATE: Reading Ken Jennings's blog today, I have a better answer. Apparently Italo Calvino had an unfinished sequel to Invisible Cities about women rather than municipalities.
7. One book you wish had never been written?

My Antonia made me so angry that I threw it against the wall when I finished it. But I'm not sure it's fair to hold my rage against the book.

8. One book you are currently reading?

One advantage of an internet-less vacation is that you can wrap up some unfinished books. I'm reading Neil Stephenson's Diamond Age on a friend's strong recommendation.

9. One book you have been meaning to read?

There are so many. How about David Currie's The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany? It was recalled from me at the beginning of the summer and I haven't gotten the copy back, so it will be in this category for a while.

10. Now tag five people.

Having failed to post much until now it seems a little cheeky to start demading content from others. But if Hanah Volokh, or co-bloggers Amy, Peter, Jeremy, or Amanda (plus aforementioned Sudeep) have time to answer, I'd love to read theirs. [Tagging Jacob Levy seems too presumptuous.]

Tyler Cowen is right that Kundera's Laughable Loves was a fun read. I liked this part, too:

Boarding is a higher level of activity that means that we will get in touch with a particular woman, make her acquaintance, and gain access to her.

He who likes to look back boastfully will stress the names of the women he's made love to; but he who looks forward, toward the future, must above all see to it that he has plenty of women sighted and boarded.

Over and above boarding there exists only one last level of activity, and I am happy to point out . . . that those who do not go after anything but this last level are wretched, primitve men, who remind me of village soccer players pressing forward thoughtlessly toward the other team's goal, forgetting that it is not enough to score a goal (and many goals) out of the frenetic desire of the kicker, but that it is first neccessary to play a conscientious and systematic game on the field.

Charlie pushed his fedora back onto his head. Some hats can only be worn if you're willing to be jaunty, to set them at an angle and to walk beneath them with a spring in your stride as if you're only a step away from dancing. They demand a lot of you.

Neil Gaiman-- Anansi Boys

. . . have been vastly overstated. The current appearance is merely the result of unprecedented neglect, meaning every post has been swept off the front page. I'm currently plowing through a week of emails and trying to figure out if my Dell's hard drive can be saved from the "unmountable boot volume" error screen I get every time I try to start it. (It's out of warranty, and I'm ready to throw it to the wolves, but I want my files.)

More content to come.