This week's languishing cookbooks!

In this world one cannot have enough cookbooks.

I read cookbooks like others read novels. I have a stack of both by my bed but for the moment, reading fiction, at least until my book group resumes in the fall, is just not grabbing me. That's almost heresy for a librarian to say that, but at least my nose is stuck in a book, even if it's "just" a cookbook.

I like to buy cookbooks because I tend to trash them. Not a good policy if you are borrowing them. But if you are not in the mood or are inclined to purchase cookbooks the way I do, then the local public library stacks is still a great place to review titles and try out recipes before you add a title or three to your own personal collection. On occasion I like to use the library's collection as a testing place, a place to not only come across new recipes to taste but a place where I can "taste" new words, learn new techniques, get a sense of an author's or cook's version of the food world. It's a cheaper practice that schlepping down to Borders each time I want to try out a new recipe. And it's certainly alot more fun than hitting up the 'net.

But first and foremost, in order for a book to walk out of the branch with me it has to fill a need: topic, illustration, photography, layout, writing style. There are lots of reasons for picking up a fresh title, I know, but something has to be there in the first place to draw you in. Make you want to stop, read through it and say "man, that sounds tasty! Gotta check this one out!"

Take, for instance, the following title. Pie: 300 Tried-and-True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie/Ken Haedrich/Harvard Common Press, 2004. We're now deep into summer. Many you out there have gardens and trees that are producing or are heading towards producing a bumper crop of delicious fruits and vegetables for your table. Maybe you like to visit a local farmer's markets on the weekends, or tend to occasionally head out of town to pick up boxes of fruit from orchards or farms, and wonder, in the end, what to do with all that fresh picked fruit.

Pie is a title ripe for your summer wanderings, full of ideas on how to capitalize not only on the fresh fruits of summer but those stored ones of fall and winter, too. Berry, cherry and pear pies. Cheese, nut, fried and ice cream pies. Pies with names like Strawberry-Raspberry Mint Pie, Georgia Orcutt's Thanksgiving Dried Fruit Pie, Chocolate Lava Pies, Watermelon Chiffon Pie, Black Bottom Ricotta Cheese Pie and many, many more. There is a full sections on crusts and pastries, turnovers, freezer pies and the like. Very user friendly, nice selection of photographs and plenty of tips they call "recipes for success" at the end of each recipe to ensure that your pies will turn out awesome.

Some titles just have to find their way into your own personal collection after one viewing. I found a copy A Tale of 12 Kitchens: Family Cooking in Four Countries/Jake Tilson, foreword by Nancy Harmon Jenkins/Artisan, 2006 last summer at my local branch library, and within a week of returning it knew I had to have it for my own. My local independent bookseller had a copy on the shelf and I was only too happy to part with my hard earned dollars for the pleasure of owning it. This title is not one that I would qualify as a cookbook as much as it is a coffee table cooking memoir. It's not only one family's history of cooking and food and travel, but it's an overview of life in Britain in the seventies, Scotland in the eighties, as well as life and travels in Italy, New York and California. The book is a veritable scrapbook of cooking ephemera, full of snapshots of food, family, restaurants and places that I long to see and experience in the way that Jake Tilson made seem so friendly and appealling. One peak into his restaurant supply house experience had me pouring through my local yellow pages to set up something similar here.

But to be sure there are recipes here, too: A turkey mole rojo recipe out of California, Kailkenny, a regional Scottish potato/cabbage dish, E Train Cherry Cola Roast Ham from New York, Slow Cooked Rabbit in Porcini Sauce (Conglio con Panna Porcini) from Tuscany and Bigo's Polish Hunters Stew. All sound wonderful and look easy to make, but face it, cooking takes second place here. It's a museum, a travelogue, a catalog and a snapshot into a food loving family's life, all rolled into one.

The Book Club Cookbook: Receipes and Food for Thought From Your Book Club's Favorite Books and Authors/Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp/Penguin, 2004

I love my bookgroup. I love to share titles with friends and suggest books to patrons when they're looking for a new and interesting read. What is wonderful about this book is that it ties a specific recipe to a particular title, which I can see would be handy if you are hosting your bookgroup and you wanted to make something special for them to nosh on that month. This title contains synopses of a wide variety of books, ranging from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and To Kill a Mockingbird, to The Killer Angels and The Good Earth. For instance, Love in the Time of Cholera is matched with Mango, Jicama and Corn Salad, while The Bonesetter's Daughter is fixed up Fountain Court Eggplant Sauteed with Fresh Basil. I'm looking forward to a having a Pumpkin Biscuit while reading Seabiscuit, or maybe snacking on Mozzarella Sticks while I'm being Nicked and Dimed. Each chapter also chronicles different bookgroups around the nation, all with their own take on what makes a bookgroup great.

Food and books. What better combination?

Cooks Talk!