I think this might be some confirmation bias in action; if you actually look at the front page of http://ask.metafilter.com/ today (or pretty much any day in recent years), or the popular questions at http://ask.metafilter.com/home/popularfavorites , the majority are not in these buckets you're complaining about.
("Recommend good books/movies/tools for X" questions are disproportionately represented in the "popular" list, because users interested in the same topic tend to favorite these so they can follow the recommendations too.)
My own favorite AskMe thread recently was this crowd-sourced deciphering of a hundred-year-old postcard written in Norwegian in an obsolete gothic script:
Edit: unfortunately I can't test your theory, because the 'most popular' links only go back so far. And, I'm interested in the ones in a typical 'day range' for favorites, around 10-60, or so. But, it would be interesting to test.
If you're logged in, you can also use the "My Ask" tab to browse questions from selected tags/categories, instead of all categories. Useful if you prefer, say, science questions over relationship questions.
("Recommend good books/movies/tools for X" questions are disproportionately represented in the "popular" list, because users interested in the same topic tend to favorite these so they can follow the recommendations too.)
My own favorite AskMe thread recently was this crowd-sourced deciphering of a hundred-year-old postcard written in Norwegian in an obsolete gothic script:
http://ask.metafilter.com/257990/Help-me-decipher-this-handw...