Penguin Books do food

One of the very lovely things about books is the way that they can cover nearly every other area of interest in our lives. I posted after my annual visit to the Sydney Craft Fair with Knitting Buddy, having succumbed to the book stall (there are three garments currently under construction from two of the books). I don't have lots of knitting, sewing or craft books, per se - although I do have oodles of art, craft and design books - but I have to say it's more due to keeping my hands behind my back than because I didn't want them at the time...

Anyway, purpose of this post was a discovery in a local department store the other day in the cookbook section - those I do have in quantity... A foodie of many years, I cannot resist a good cookbook, and have just indulged in the purchase of Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's Jerusalem - and this, for those with a taste for Middle Eastern food, is an absolute must. The photo below is the mixed bean salad (absolutely stupendous vegetable section) I made to go with our trout for last Friday night's dinner. DB came into the house salivating - he said he could smell the roasted whole spices in the warm dressing as soon as he came out of the lift!

I digressed. Food - and books - will do that to you! The department store discovery may be of particular interest to Peter over at Kyusireader...who is a mad Penguin book fan. He's just been collecting the new Penguin editions of all the John Wyndhams - while lusting after my vintage Penguin copies. And if you check out his blog, you'll find many posts that go back to his love of Penguin books, which he buys in batches when he finds them... So Peter, this is for you - as I seem to recall several enthusiastic notes about various edibles as well - Penguin Australia, in their trademark classic orange covers, have brought out a range of cookbooks by Aussie chefs...you're going to want these....!

Bookshop browsing

You know that feeling you get when you go someplace and see something and think, "Darn...that was my idea and she beat me to it!" I got that in spades this morning. Needing to do a brief errand, I got ready to head out, and then the brief errand got a bit more substantial when DB said, "If you're going to the bank, could you maybe go to the bank in Double Bay and take my shirts to the cleaners at the same time?" So, instead of walking up to the local shops, I got in the car and drove to Double Bay... Bonus was, the bookshop was open early for some reason, so of course I had to go have a browse - with my hands firmly behind my back! And in amongst all the new goodies was a new book - gorgeous little hardcover, too, with a silky dust jacket (drool...) - by Ramona Korval, By the Book: A reader's guide to life. A book about reading, about books she's read that have been important, and about how books can read us. I have been playing with an idea like this for quite some time - hence this blog... The lesson, of course, is to get beyond thinking about doing these things, and get down to actually doing them!

And, to go back to the bookshop when my next writing pay cheque comes in, and buy Korval's book...

Never enough room for books!

As my regular readers will remember, I have had three house moves in the last year, and as always, the books are a major job all on their own. DB was once memorably quoted as saying too me, "You have too many books." To which I replied it was impossible to have too many books. He qualified it by saying you can never have too many art books, but you can have too many books...!

When my mother died, I inherited her poetry collection. You can read about that a little bit in a previous post here. At the time I went to collect the books, I realised I'd need to take the bookcase as well because I knew I wouldn't have enough room for the collection on my shelves, and my father's comment was, "You're as bad as your mother."

The History Teacher posted this on Facebook yesterday, and it just sums the whole situation up perfectly...