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Good Reading : October 2010
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fully booked Di Morrissey on researching in Malaysia Peter Klein on life at the track Shakespeare's Verona Ruth Rendell on her latest crime Don't miss our Christmas Gift Guide! NEXT ISSUE on sale 29 October ORDER YOUR COPY NOW! ‘We try to cook from as many of our books as possible. Our day revolves around talking about recipes, food and restaurants ...’ them have influenced and helped us along the way. We have always been equally fascinated by, and worked in, the hospitality and food sectors.These twin influences have defined much of what we do. Perhaps our most unique trait is that we are obsessively true to our subject -- food and wine. We stock any good book we can find on our subject -- not just a cookbook or a recipe book. But nothing else -- no Harry Potter, no Twilight, no Dan Brown, no Nora Roberts or Christos Tsiolkas (although, if they wrote a cookbook ...). About 10% of our stock is devoted to wine, with almost as much about coffee, tea, cocktails, and other beverages. Another 10% are books about food: the sociology, politics, and history of food; gardening, food literature and fiction, anthropology, design, packaging, architecture, and so on. Our more obscure subject areas on the shelves include Uzbekhistan, Macau, Aga Stoves, Food in Art, Suet Cookery, even Cannibalism (but not how-to books!). We have cookbooks by Elvis, Sophia Loren -- even the Desperate Housewives Cookbook. As well as domestic cookbooks, we also stock a wide range of hard-to-find professional, fine dining and artisan food and wine books sourced from all over the world. Many of our customers are chefs or food professionals and we always have books from the world's top restaurants and chefs. Our bestselling books are mostly about artisan food or wine production, such as preserving and charcuterie. We also love out-of-print and antiquarian books. New is not always better and not all cookbooks need photos. Our oldest books in store are from the 1780s and about 40% of our stock is out of print, pre-loved or antiquarian.We have boxes of uncatalogued vintage and antique Australian cookbooks and ephemera (such as pamphlets or recipe booklets) waiting for a cook and most days we buy boxes of old cookbooks which are all carefully catalogued, repaired, cleaned and sold to good homes. We also offer a special order and request service. We do find most things, although with some out-of-print books it can take a while -- our record is over nine years! As bibliophiles, we love our books, so every hardcover is protected with archival film (not contact) so that it can be used in the kitchen and wiped down. Our books are all shelved spine out (like at home) and we tend to stock the books that we have at home or want to read or cook from; so some popular titles don't always make it into store in a timely way. We are never fully up to date with the range of standard local new releases that you find in most stores. Most of our new books are older titles or from overseas (and are often obscure) and from our earliest days we have eagerly sourced privately published, self-published, foreign language or foreign- published books. Being in love with the form of the book as well as its content, we often have multiple for mats and editions in stock. We also stock a range of specialist magazines not otherwise generally available. We have had the pleasure of hosting many authors, cooks and chefs including Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller, Maggie Beer, Stephanie Alexander, Michel Roux, Greg and Lucy Malouf, Stéphane Reynaud, Antonio Carluccio, Damien Pignolet, to name just a few. And yes, we try to cook from as many of our books as possible. Our day revolves around talking about recipes, food and restaurants with our customers and staff. Rarely a week goes by without some of our customers bringing in a cake or biscuits, ice-cream or smoked pork shoulder or a bottle of wine they've made; and most days we end up with more recipes to take home and digest. Books for Cooks new & old books about wine, food & the culinary arts bought & sold 233-235 Gertrude St, Fitzroy Vic 3065 T: 03 8415 1415 Open: Mon-Sat 10-6; Sun 11-5 www.booksforcooks.com.au
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