When I was still in school, especially when I was in graduate school, I would read through cookbooks like I read a novel: from front to back. (Honestly, I’m a front-to-back reader with any book I pick up – I’ve never been one to skip sections.) My roommates would frequently tease me, “That’s now how you read a cookbook.” To which I would generally reply, “You mean, it’s not how YOU read a cookbook.” Cookbooks were so different from the academic literature I spent most of my time immersed in, and I could imagine what each dish would taste like as I read about it.

Over the years, I have acquired a lot of cookbooks (to be read: enough to fill an entire floor to ceiling bookshelf). As we’re putting up bookcases and rearranging space in this house, I realized that while there are a few cookbooks that I currently use and love, I mostly cook without a book. Due to this, I no longer use or even look at the majority of those cookbooks books any more. In addition, many of the cookbooks are specific to foods that I no longer eat (for example, I have several wonderful books on making different types of breads, but they’re all wheat flour based). So I’m slowly sorting through boxes of cookbooks and preparing to give away the majority of them.

As I leaf through the books again, I remember where I got the book – or the person who gave it to me. I remember the meals shared over food from those books, which were sometimes spectacular successes and sometimes complete flops. I remember testing my culinary wings over complex recipes, and I see my modifications to recipes over the years (always slipped in on a sheet of paper – I am not one to write in my books).

I reflect that spending so much time reading page by page through these books is likely why I generally cook without a book now. There are enough recipes floating around in my head to allow me to approximate whatever sounds good at the moment without needing too much guidance.

So I am pulling out books I may still use, whether directly or indirectly; there are a few books I’m saving that are full of ingredients that we no longer eat, but provide great inspiration for new things to try if I modify them a bit. This much smaller collection will live on a shelf in my kitchen. The rest I am preparing to donate. As I place these books in a donation box I wonder, who will read them next? And will [s]he read them like a novel?