Most books about food are fascinating to me. Not this one: Oxford Food: An Anthology. "What?" you gasp. An academic who is bored by a book? By a book with a prestigious institution like Oxford in its title? A foodie bored by a food book?
Yes, that's me. Bored. I am returning the book to the library without reading much of it. Even though it says Ashmolean Museum and Bodleian Library on the cover. Even though it offers menus and recipes for various collleges. Even though. . . . .
Somehow, it just doesn't do it for me. So, I am letting this book fly free, back to the library here on my own home campus. Maybe it'll find a kinder reader -- or a more interested one at least.
I just don't care, it turns out, about who ate an elegant dinner at the Warden of New College in December of 1774. Perhaps I should. But. . . I don't.
What don't you care about today?
EDIT: Originally posted in 2006 - which seems like a century ago, the question is a new one in the era of COVID. Perhaps what was once boring is now exciting? Perhaps we are more patient with everything - or more frazzled and frustrated. Perhaps the very real violence - violence that is in no way a metaphor - that exists in the worlds in which we live ought push this sort of metaphoric construction out of bounds? What do you think now?
