books in moderation

Upon the return of my food books, a lot of which were stored at my friend's studio for a while, I dusted and reshuffled my bookshelves - this shot shows the very middle part... I'm not impartial about my books; my cookbooks and other culinary books take up the favorited spots of the 17 compartments, which is how my bookcases are divided.

Speaking of books, I pledged not to buy a single book from mid-Feb through March. I realized that I'm addicted to buying books. Books have a way of fooling you as if the word "excessive" does not apply to book shopping and as if I am exonerated from it no matter what. ... I daily consume books, but not as fast as I buy them. Everything in moderation, so much so as the cliche goes...

The blue spine, L'Abri, inadvertently fell on top of this pile during the reshuffling. I read it years ago. Below it lies A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg, a famous food blogger of Orangette. I started reading it only a few days ago but already made two recipes out of it: banana bread with chocolate and crystallized ginger (yes! ginger with banana) and french toast. Her recipes are simply delicious. I am reading my fourth Milan Kundera right now, three of them this month. It happens to be a book-club-sort-of month with Kundera. Two of Jamie's books are new addition to my library. (I didn't buy them!) They are gifts from a generous friend. And last but not least, 음식과 요리 is a Korean version of On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee, a former astronomist turned into an English lit Ph. D. who researched to find out how egg yolks are made and the temperature inside your soufflé. Its appearance doesn't fail to tell me that the content is encyclopedically dense. Nor does it fail to tell me about Harold, a man enamored of food.