You see, I’ve been converted. There is, there has been, and there will have been, only one Julia Child in all of history. Her story (which I read in My Life in France) is fascinating and inspiring, her cooking style (which I experienced in part in Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom) is refreshingly simple, and together the two Julia Child books I read gave me hope for my own pathetic cooking abilities. It is, therefore, completely unfair to include Ms. Franklin’s book (and my criticisms of it) in the same post. Nevertheless, because I read Julia Child on the wake of Too Many Cooks, Ms. Franklin is a part of my experience in the past few weeks.

I enjoyed Too Many Cooks: Kitchen Adventures with 1 Mom, 4 Kids, and 102 Recipes by Emily Franklin to some extent. Some of her ideas were right on with what I’d expect. For example, she believes one gets kids to eat healthful foods by feeding them healthful foods, not by hiding vegetables in brownies. Also, she suggests great ways to introduce unfamiliar foods by explaining how they are similar to the foods the children are already familiar with.

Yet, I had expected more cooking inspiration for how to feed a family. Instead, I felt it was a Mommy-blog style book, with lots of emphasis on how great a mom she is because she does such and such. That’s not to say it was bad: it just wasn’t my style, since I personally get bored with mommy blogs. “Mommy blogs” also give me a guilt complex since I know I will never have the energy and talent, for example, to improvise a muffin recipe in the 45 minutes before soccer practice.

Too Many Cooks also failed to inspire me in the kitchen because it seemed Ms Franklin was so far beyond my abilities, especially since she readily admitted to having worked as a cook in a luxury yacht in the years before mommy-hood. In my pre-mommy years, I was preparing Rice-a-Roni four or five nights a week. That’s not to say the recipes in Too Many Cooks (for example, Monte Cristo sandwiches and Cornish pasties and chicken nuggets) are “fancy” or incredibly challenging. But they are not simple, and they are not recipes that give you a foundation for future cooking. (I felt rather incompetent when Ms. Franklin’s easy Mommy Chicken Nuggets recipe took me two hours. I wrote a few posts about some of the recipes I tried on my Cooking Journal.)

I didn’t realize how uninspired I was until I picked up Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom, a slim 110-page volume Julia Child produced in the last years of her life. I’ve always been intimidated by Julia Child, since Mastering the Art of French Cooking is a monster tome (and comes in two volumes) and “French Cooking” in general is not practical for a mommy on a budget. In short, I’ve been afraid of reading Julia Child.

All that was without foundation, for Julia’s Wisdom made cooking sound easy. The best part is that I believe her: it is that easy. She’s not trying to give us recipes for a lifetime of cooking: she’s trying to share tidbits of the most important techniques that we may need over a lifetime. Her philosophy is

Once you have mastered a technique, you hardly need look at a recipe again. (page 3, Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom)

Kitchen Wisdom has a few basic recipes for soups; salads;  vegetables; meats, poultry and fish; egg cookery; breads, crepes, and tarts; cakes and cookies. Each section also has ideas for variations. I’ve tried a few of the recipes and they seem simple enough. While they all certainly have the French influence, they are not as overwhelming as I anticipated. I almost want to check out Mastering the Art of French Cooking now!

As I write about this book of “essentials,” I am reminded of Alice Waters’ book (The Art of Simple Food), which I reviewed at the beginning of the Spice of Life Challenge. I’m not sure what the difference was (both focus on the basics to help us know how to make food taste good) but in some respects, I feel Julia Child is better able to speak to the incompetent cook: myself.

I fell even more in love with Julia Child when I read her memoir, My Life in France. Just as I doubted her cookbook, I doubted I’d relate to this story. But I was delightfully surprised. I was amazed to learn that when she was first married, her cooking was much like my cooking when I was first married:

My meals were satisfactory, but they took hours of laborious effort to produce. I’d usually plop something on the table by 10:00 p.m., have a few bites, and collapse into bed. (My Life in France, page 6)

Julia Child did not know how to cook. Her husband’s work took them to France, and there Julia Child found herself without much to do. But the delectable food had made an impression on her from the first day, and she became determined to learn how to produce it.

I could relate to that as well. Although I am not sure I’ve had any true “French” food, my husband took me to a delicious restaurant in Chicago while we were dating and I was so impressed by the meal as an experience I’ve wanted to improve my own cooking abilities. There is something about eating that can move you, if you let it!

The most impressive part of Julia Child’s story was her determination. She spent weeks on a project (mayonnaise, for example) until she got it right. Although she was a student at the Cordon Bleu, the school was (from this perspective) rather inept, and she had to teach herself the essentials of cooking. And she did.

Although a French-style cook book for American audiences was Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle’s idea, Julia Child was the one that understood what creating such a book for an American audience would require. She was the one that worked out the amounts for most of the recipes. Although Simone Beck did a lot of work too, Julia Child was the rock behind the project. If you’ll pardon a ridiculous pun, she was the yeast that allowed it to rise to its monumental size, depth, and ultimate success.

I loved the memoir. I loved Julia’s relationship with her husband, Paul. I loved the image of France it created in my mind. It’s probably changed since then (as Julia mentions), but the idyllic people, places, and food were simply fascinating from the historical perspective. We can only wish it were so peaceful now! (And someday I will make it to Provence.)

There were so many inspiring quotes in My Life in France. I imagine it is one I’ll reread someday: maybe then I’ll take care to write down the snippets of Julia’s wisdom so we can all learn from the Master.

Julia Child’s memoir (and her cook book) is inspiring for the busy family cook. Just as it illustrates that learning to cook good food is not a year-long project, but a life-long pursuit, it also illustrates that it is possible and even fun! Thanks to Julia Child for bringing delicious food to America, and for giving housewives the inspiration to attempt the seemingly impossible!

As my husband said every time I stopped reading to tell him an inspiring story: “There is a reason Julia Child is a household name!”

• My Spice of Life “Feast”: A Pool of Books to Chose From
• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters
• A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg
• The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman
• The Spice of Life Challenge
• An Edge in the Kitchen by Chad Ward
• Pretend Soup by Mollie Katzen and Ann Henderson
• The Making of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman
• Reading Journal (4 Nov): Reading Progress and Library Loot
• Reading Journal (28 October): Thoughts on Read-a-thons and Eye Strain

Overall, I liked the information I read. I got excited about my kitchen knives! But when I went to try and sharpen my own knives according to the instructions in the book, I was a bit lost. My husband, who has sharpened kitchen knives himself before, seems to think the problem was me, and not the book. Nonetheless, for a novice knife sharpener, I’d suggest that a book is probably not a great place to start your knife sharpening education.

I’m a relatively new cook, so I feel most of what I read about the technical aspects of cooking is new to me. This book was no different. I read An Edge in the Kitchen at a very slow rate, about 10-15 pages a day while I ate breakfast. This worked pretty well for me.

I learned about buying knives: there are more knives out there than I could ever want let alone use! There are knife collectors out there just like there are book collectors. (Why does that scare me?) I learned what is important and what is not important when buying a knife. For example, don’t waste your money buying a block of knives: buy the individual knife that you need and get a good one (and there are good ones for $40-$60).

I learned about cutting boards, knife storage, and general kitchen safety. Did you know lots of food poisoning can be avoided by washing the sink? Keeping separate cutting boards for meat versus vegetables helps too, of course.

An Edge in the Kitchen also reviewed some basic cuts. The middle of the book had color pages illustrating some of the basic ways to cut vegetables and meats for cooking. He also provided a few recipes that require lots of cutting so people can practice with their knives. I personally don’t mind the prep side of cooking a meal, but I admit I’m am incredibly slow with a knife. I have a hard time imagining that some people cook recipes with specially cut vegetables just so they can use their knives more often. Really?

The last section of An Edge in the Kitchen provided some facts about maintenance and sharpening. The maintenance and honing was clear to me. I felt like I was learning something. I liked the comparison of the various sharpening systems, and I accept fully the argument that electric sharpeners are very very bad for your knives.

As I read the instructions about sharpening with a stone, I started getting a bit confused. When I sat down one afternoon to try, I admit I was nearly in tears I was so frustrated and confused. I think the instructions may be good for someone like my husband who’s done it before, but I was completely lost. All the talk about angles and burrs was incredibly confusing. I tried to do what it said, and I don’t think it was good for the knife. My husband showed me what he’s always done and it seemed a lot less confusing that the book made it sound.

So the bottom line is, don’t read a book to try to sharpen a knife unless you’ve already done this before or at least seen it done. I look for a video of knife sharpening on YouTube, and my husband showed me what he does. Two hours later and the one knife I was working on doesn’t feel any sharper to me. And now I wonder if I’ve ruined it.

Chad Ward says in this book that anyone who can cook a complicated recipe can sharpen their own knives. I’m thinking that the two arts are rather different things. I’m not so happy at this point.

I’ll try sharpening my knives again in another day or two, when I’m not feeling frustrated at the thought. Maybe I just need practice.

Do you sharpen your own knives with a stone? How did you learn?

• The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman
• A Bite of the Spice of Life (Two Books by Julia Child and Too Many Cooks by Emily Franklin)
• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters
• Pretend Soup by Mollie Katzen and Ann Henderson
• The Making of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman
• The Spice of Life Challenge
• Carmen by Prosper Merimee
• A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg
• Reading Journal (26 Aug): Focused Reading
• My Spice of Life “Feast”: A Pool of Books to Chose From

Alice Waters is the original proponent of seasonal, local, and organic foods. But because I grocery shop for a family on a budget, I can never justify going “organic.” I also live in Chicago suburbia, which means that there are about two feet of snow on the ground for four months of the year, so I can’t ever imagine relying wholly on seasonal and local foods either. I’m sure organic and local foods taste better; I just can’t justify the cost difference.

All that said, though, I love The Art of Simple Food. I find myself referring to her pointers and recipes often. The aspect I love is this: Food should taste like itself. Don’t complicate things!

I’m a person that thinks a few fresh strawberries make a perfect dessert, so I really like her emphasis on simplicity. Her recipes are very basic essentials, so experienced cooks may find them dull or “too simple.” But as a beginning cook who loves simple dishes (both for cooking and for eating), I find her recipes refreshing.

For example, in the section “Out of the Frying Pan,” she provides a recipe for Pan-Fried Pork Chops. The ingredients? Pork chops, butter, salt and pepper. Her instructions show us how to recreate it, including what it should look like and why you should let the chops rest for four minutes before serving (it tenderizes them). She also provides four “variations” for added flavor. These are likewise very simple, things like “parsley butter” or “garnish with chopped parsley, garlic, and/or lemon zest” (a gremolata) (page 122).

The Art of Simple Food is subtitled “Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution,” and Waters does a wonderful job of introducing “simple food” to the home cook. She begins with some essential thoughts about the kitchen and pantry. These ideas are pretty basic (such as basic foods with which to stock a pantry) and simple menus, both for a small family and for entertaining. I liked her thoughts on picnics, and how a picnic should emphasis good food just as much as a feast you serve at home. Every time I read that section, I want to go on a picnic!

In this first part of the book, Waters discusses the basic techniques for various types of food and food preparation. For each type, she also provides three recipes. The categories are these: sauces, salads, bread, broth and soup, beans, pasta and polenta, rice, roasting, sautéing, slow cooking, simmering, grilling, omelets and soufflés, tarts, fruit desserts, custard and ice cream, cookies and cakes.

The second part of the book has additional recipes in each category. The recipes aren’t as detailed, but the basics have already been outlined, so it is sufficient for our needs.

I have only read the first part in full, but I’ve also browsed through the recipes on the second half. I’m not sure I’ll go through and completely cook my way through the book (as I’d intend) but I certainly love the “variations” and technique overview that I find in this book. I’m all for simple food.

Do you eat organic or local food? What do you like best about it?

What simple foods do like best?

This review is for The Spice of Life Challenge. It’s cross-posted on Rebecca’s Cooking Journal.

If you have reviewed The Art of Simple Food, leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it here.

• A Bite of the Spice of Life (Two Books by Julia Child and Too Many Cooks by Emily Franklin)
• A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg
• Pretend Soup by Mollie Katzen and Ann Henderson
• An Edge in the Kitchen by Chad Ward
• The Spice of Life Challenge
• The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman
• The Making of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman
• My Spice of Life “Feast”: A Pool of Books to Chose From
• Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel + Giveaway
• Fundamentals of Photography by Tom Ang

Fundamentals of Photography is a dense book, full of technical terms, explanations, and diagrams. As such, it was challenging to read it cover to cover. Besides, it was a new book at the library, so I had a three-week time limit, which made it all the more challenging. I would have loved to study it over the course of an entire semester in school or maybe during my lifetime – for there are so many details within it that were unfamiliar to me. Despite the difficulty, reading it was incredibly rewarding.

Previously, I thought of photography primarily as a fine art: capturing images for aesthetic pleasure. I reviewed a coffee table book a few months ago that helped me see photography as such. That was helpful in helping me think about photography aesthetically. But now, having stumbled through Tom Ang’s handbook, I realize that photography is also a complicated science: using lighting and tools to your advantage to capture the most aesthetically pleasing image for an infinite number of needs.

The book is organized by basic principles:

1. What is photography?
2. Fundamentals of Light
3. The Camera
4. Capturing Light
5. Using the Lens
6. Manipulating Light
7. Working with Color
8. Processing the Image
9. Digitizing the Image
10. Outputting the Image
11. References (tools in Photoshop; troubleshooting with film, etc.)

As I read each chapter, I wanted to experiment with various things – not to mention purchase a new camera after chapter 3, purchase $1,000 of lens after chapter 5, and scan all of my film after chapter 9. I even (briefly) wanted to learn how to develop film after reading about darkroom work  (however, if I had to do all the work to process my photographs, I’d not be interested in photography at all!).

I started a photoblog a few months ago, and although I had started to neglect it, I did want to dedicate more time to my photography in the New Year. Now, however, I realize how inferior my photographs are, for I failed to use many of the basic developing processes that Photoshop has to over, let alone to capture the images in proper lighting and with an appealing composition. (To be honest, I now feel rather embarrassed that my poor photographs are on the web!)

One reviewer on Amazon suggested that there is too much emphasis on film photography in Fundamentals of Photography. There is a fair amount of detail about film in Fundamentals of Photography, and I’d suggest that understanding how film works is integral to understanding how digital processing works. I had a lot to learn, and I still do, but I’m grateful I read this book.

I saw a review of this book on Epic Edits, one of the photography sites I follow. Although I didn’t win a copy of Fundamentals of Photography in the giveaway, I was delighted to see it was a new book in my local library. I found Fundamentals of Photography to be a powerful technical reference for an amateur photographer and I’d recommend it for anyone else interested in photography as a science and art.

Are you an amateur photographer? Where do you post your photographs? Do you get constructive criticism? How to best find yourself improving your talent? What photography books have helped you?

Other reviews:

• Epic Edits Photoblog

If you have reviewed Fundamentals of Photography, leave a link in the comments and I’ll post it here.

• Masterclass in Photography by Michael and Julien Busselle
• Moments: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photographs by Hal Buell
• Material World by Peter Menzel
• Jerusalem: The Eternal City by David Galbraith et al
• Reading Habits: Who What When Where Why How?
• Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein
• What the World Eats by Peter Menzel
• The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman
• From Conception to Birth: A Life Unfolds by Alexander Tsiaras
• The Planets by Dava Sobel + A Giveaway

These are the questions that photographer Peter Menzel seeks to answer through his coffee table book of pictures and information: What the World Eats.

The pictures of families from around the world with their week’s worth of food and the short accounts of their eating habits were interesting. In the end, however, I felt Menzel’s book was forcing a social problem on the reader, and it seemed to further contribute to stereotypes of eating habits around the world.

My main frustration with Menzel’s book is that he set out to prove that a lifestyle of fast food and processed food, the stereotypical lifestyle of Americans, is bad. Does any one argue with that? Yet, he had a point he wanted to make (as explained in his introduction) and every statistic and story he shared seemed to support his argument, rather than allowing the readers to make our own determinations about world eating habits.

Further, he reinforced the stereotypes we have of various countries in the world by sharing the eating stories of just one or two families in each country. We read of a bacon and eggs breakfast in England, a beef-heavy diet in the Australian bush, a pizza dinner in the U.S., tortillas and Coca-Cola in Mexico (for a family in which the father had illegally immigrated to the U.S. to find work), fish in Japan, and unhealthful rice three meals a day in the Darfur refugee camp. Because Menzel represented each country with just one family (with a few exceptions), it seemed to reinforce stereotype rather than build any understanding of the world’s eating habits.

Between the stories, Menzel did provide statistics for the represented countries relating to average caloric intake, average sugar consumption per person per year, and other food-related statistics. This was a nice touch, and I may have appreciated it better if I hadn’t felt Menzel was trying to force his message through the accompanying stories. Menzel’s stereotypes may be rather accurate in general. However, I felt his book generated the wrong message overall because it only built on the stereotypes rather than showing that each country has many varying ways of eating. For example, there are many American families (like mine) who rarely eat out or eat processed food. Believe it or not, I cook with vegetables!

Further, this book is horribly edited: typos abound. This is a problem that could have been ignored had I not been so annoyed by Menzel’s stereotypes.

In the end, however, I was touched by the account of the refugee camp because that is a stereotype I am unfamiliar with. Having read about a diet that lacks so many essential nutrients, I want to learn more about the situation in Darfur (something that somehow didn’t capture my attention even during Maw Books’ month-long refugee reading project).

I initially selected Menzel’s book as a “World Issues” book for the World Citizen Challenge. What the World Eats was an interesting look at eating habits around the globe, but because it was so stereotypical (and ultimately geared toward telling Americans how poorly we eat), I probably will find something else related to world poverty or hunger (specifically Darfur) because I am very interested in the issue.

See a few sample photos from Menzel’s book in this article from Time magazine. Also, a family that wasn’t featured in the book is featured on Menzel’s website, whattheworldeats.com (the site only appears to work in Internet Explorer, unless my firefox is just having problems today).

What do you eat in a week? Do you fit the stereotype? Do you think highlighting stereotypical families is a good representation of the countries of the world? Maybe that is the best way to illustrate the statistics. What do you think?

• Material World by Peter Menzel
• Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters
• A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift
• Hunger: An Unnatural History by Sharman Apt Russell
• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
• God’s Bits of Wood by Sembene Ousmane
• The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington
• A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg
• Abandoned Book: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

In addition to the gorgeous, full-color illustrations and photographs, there are some well-developed textual descriptions of conception and reproduction. Yet, such writing is tasteful and brief and this book remains a quality coffee table book one can browse at leisure.

View sample pages via “Search inside!” on Amazon.

I rediscovered this book while unpacking after our international move. Moving is like Christmas! (except never ending…)

• Moments: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photographs by Hal Buell
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
• Masterclass in Photography by Michael and Julien Busselle
• Fundamentals of Photography by Tom Ang
• Material World by Peter Menzel
• Caldecott Corner: The House in the Night by Beth Krommes, 2009 Award Winner
• My Introduction to the Harlem Renaissance
• On Writing by Stephen King
• The End of Publishing?
• The Life of Our Lord by Charles Dickens

Read the subtitle to this book again: Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference. That is what this about, commas. In just 20 pages, sentences are illustrated to show how commas make a difference in meaning, sometimes with very humorous results. Grammatical explanations are only included as an appendix: this is all about the illustrations (which I can’t post due to copyright).

The student, said the teacher, is crazy.

The student said the teacher is crazy.

I don’t think it belongs in the children’s section. It is just as clever as the book for adults, and it simply provides illustrated examples of how commas change the meaning of sentences.

Find it and read it, if only to laugh at the silly pictures!

• Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dogs by Kitty Burns Florey + Giveaway
• Booking Through Thursday: Manual Labor
• Childhood Reads
• What the World Eats by Peter Menzel
• 2008 in Review
• The Arrival by Shaun Tan
• The Student by Anton Chekhov: A Perfect Short Story
• Rose, Where Do You Get that Red? by Kenneth Koch + Reading with Kids Challenge
• Children’s Christmas: Picture Books of the Season
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle

Using their own images as a starting point, the father-son team analyzes the significant building blocks of photographs such as the following:

• shape, patterns, and texture
• composition, framing, and perspective
• light and shadows
• color versus monochrome

In more than 300 lovely color pages, Michael and Julien take us on a journey toward understanding using their own extensive portfolio of photographs, as well as overviews of well-known photographers such as Ansel Adams, Annie Leibovitz, and Michael Fatali. They are good “professors” not because they tell the reader what is good and what is bad, but because they help the reader determine what makes the images appealing.

For example, after reading about pattern and texture, I found myself finding images as I drove down the road. For weeks, I noticed fences and bricks everywhere I went. I love the fact that I’m noticing patterns in the world around me. It was like the first time I put on glasses: I walked out of my fifth grade classroom and suddenly the building in front of me had individual bricks; the tree had individual leaves. After reading parts of this book I found myself noticing the individual aspects of the world around me. (I wish I could post some of the inspiring photographs from their book, but, obviously, they are copyrighted.)

In Masterclass in Photography, for each of Michael and Julien’s photographs, the photographer identifies the situation and approach and the other identifies what they like or dislike about the shot. Their self-analysis helped me realize the questions I should be asking about my own photography: not everything I take is significant. Similarly, photography is a matter of preference. I didn’t necessarily enjoy all of their photographs and approaches; I need to take photographs I enjoy and not worry too much what others think of them, although other people’s feedback may help, just as they gave each other feedback. Masterclass in Photography is light on text. It is about photography, and their photographs take center stage.

Since Michael and Julien have been working most of their careers with film, this book contains chapters and information about film choice and development. My copy was published in 2003, just as digital was becoming standard. (Sadly, I believe it is out of print, but visit here to buy it used for less than $2 from an Amazon marketplace seller.) At first I decided that the film developing sections were not applicable to me, who will never use a film camera again, but I changed my mind. I realized that it is important to know where we came from in photography. I think it’s important to know how it “used” to be done so I know where we are going. For example, I should know what it means to “overexpose” my photograph so I know what I can do when I go to process my photograph digitally.

Michael and Julien do dedicate a chapter to digital photography, conceding that digital imaging is a “powerful tool”:

[Digital imaging] not only allows [those who use it] to exploit the possibilities of the medium to the full but also frees them from many of the more mundane aspects of image making to concentrate on the true skill of photography—namely the ability to see, capture, and realize striking images. (page 296)

To me, that is what Masterclass in Photography helps me to do: it helps me to see that photography is not simply pressing the button. Photography is seeing an image and learning how to capture it in an appealing way.

I intend to keep Masterclass in Photography in my living room, within my daily sight, so I can refer to it and reread it whenever I feel in need of inspiration and direction in my search for images around me. I’d recommend it to other amateur photographers.

Are you interested in photography? Who are your favorite photographers? I am looking for more inspiring images and photography books.

• Fundamentals of Photography by Tom Ang
• Moments: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photographs by Hal Buell
• Material World by Peter Menzel
• Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee
• The Chicago School of Architecture by Carl W. Condit
• Painting a Novel: East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Reading Habits: Who What When Where Why How?
• The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the U.S. Constitution by Linda Monk
• The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman
• Jerusalem: The Eternal City by David Galbraith et al

Lo and behold, I found that buying a home and paying a mortgage would be a similar cost to renting. It just might be the time to buy, thanks to the low cost of homes right now. It is truly a Buyer’s Market.

However, I know nothing about real estate and mortgages. The thought of closing on a mortgage and owning a hugely expensive piece of property fills me with dread. I am pretty clueless. I decided to jump right in to some books to get me started and to get me ready.

In the last two weeks, I read/skimmed four books about real estate and mortgages. I didn’t read them in the best order, but I did “enjoy” them and learn a lot.

• Home Buying for Dummies by Eric Tyson and Ray Brown, Second Edition (the link is to the third edition)

Home Buying for Dummies was an excellent starting point. The book covers budgets, selecting professionals to help you (such as real estate agents), searching and deciding on the right home, and securing a mortgage. It’s written by real estate professionals. I haven’t read other “for Dummies” books so I’m not familiar with the genre, but it was so easy to read and actually incredibly painless. If you’re looking to purchase, it’s a great starting point. And that’s coming from someone who was quite clueless.

• 100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask by Ilyce Glink, Third Edition

100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask was another basic book that helped me think about what I want, what I need, and where to go next. This book wasn’t as good as Home Buying for Dummies. While the subtitle claims that answers come from “brokers across the country,” I saw no evidence of that as it was all in Ilyce’s voice. I couldn’t figure out what authority she had to be writing about real estate and mortgages. It seemed she was a journalist—a columnist for a newspaper—and that didn’t give her much authority. (I just visited her website at www.thinkglink.com. Her About page says “Award-winning, nationally-syndicated columnist, television reporter, radio talk show host and best-selling book author.” Why should I believe a columnist when it comes to mortgages? I would trust a real estate agent or broker much more.)

Also, I read the third edition of a book. It was originally written in the early 1990s—and it was obvious. Some parts could have done well to have a complete overhaul, rather than paragraphs that alluded to the fact that things have changed. We should read a book and not notice that it’s the third edition; we should know that everything is up-to-date. While there was some valuable information in this book, overall it’s not the best. I don’t recommend it.

• Mortgages 101 by David Reed

Mortgages 101 was written by a mortgage broker with decades of experience—and I could tell. I felt I could trust his insights into the mortgage process. This book was invaluable in my search for understanding of the mortgage process. After all, a house is the largest purchase I will have made up until this point in my life. I need to know what I’m doing before I sign all those papers. I felt David Reed helped me get to a point where I can begin the process.

You may be wondering how you could ever sit and read 200-pages of mortgage information. Trust me, this book (and Home Buying for Dummies) was approachable. While Reed may be a mortgage broker, Reed also has a natural conversational tone in his book. It was great. (However, the publisher could have hired a proofreader; there were silly errors like sentences missing periods and what not. As a former proofreader, I was a bit irked.)

• Mortgage Confidential by David Reed

I read Mortgage Confidential after Home Buying for Dummies and it was above my head at that point. I still didn’t have a basic understanding of mortgages. But, like his precursor (Mortgages 101), Reed provided valuable insight into the mortgage process in this book. If you’ve already purchased before and you want some insider tips to getting a good deal on your home purchase or refinance, this book may help ease the pain out of the mortgage process with it’s easy tips.

When I joined the Nonfiction Five Challenge, I put a book about real estate on my alternate reading list; I didn’t realize I’d be contemplating buying a home so soon, but here I am writing about four such books. In the past two weeks, I’ve gone from not knowing was “escrow” means to being willing to start a house and mortgage search. It’s exciting to feel more in “the know” and I don’t feel quite as intimidated now.

If you’re feeling ready to make the home-buying jump, you may want to check out some of the books I’ve reviewed. Or, if you’ve read a good one, let me know in the comments. I’d love to learn more, and I’m always open to more book recommendations.

• 2008 in Review
• Fundamentals of Photography by Tom Ang
• The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee
• I’m Back and Book Miscellany
• The Home-maker by Dorothy Canfield
• Doomsday for My Book Sources
• Kids Corner (1000 Books): Growing Pains
• An Edge in the Kitchen by Chad Ward
• 1000 Books: A Little Clarification + The First 80 Books or So

I have mixed feelings about Michael Ruhlman’s The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Chef’s Craft for Every Kitchen.

The Elements of Cooking is one-part opinionated essays about cooking (pages 1-50) and one-part alphabetic encyclopedia of opinionated “essential” elements to cooking. There are things I liked about both parts and other things that bordered on ridiculous. (For example, Sharpie is included in the list of essential elements to cooking. Its definition: “This brand of permanent marker is excellent for dating and labeling food; keep one in your tool drawer along with painter’s tape.” p. 215)

I didn’t realize why I was annoyed by this book until I started reading Ruhlman’s previous best-seller, The Making of a Chef. I haven’t finished that book yet. It is the story of how one is trained at the Culinary Institute of America to become a chef. Only as I read this second book do I realize what the problem is with the first book: I don’t want to be a chef. Therefore, it’s not necessary to translate the chef’s craft for my kitchen.

According to The Elements of Cooking, a chef is a leader, as in the head of a restaurant kitchen, and is firstly a good cook. A cook is what I do aspire to be. I don’t want to be a chef: I don’t want a restaurant kitchen. I want good home cooking for my home kitchen.

Because I don’t want to be a chef, some items on the alphabetic list of essential elements seem a bit ridiculous. I don’t need to learn about aspic (gelled stock), offal (innards of animals), and foie gras (duck liver). I won’t be cooking them in my kitchen. I don’t need to learn the French terms for my macaroni’s cheese sauce. I don’t need to know decorative knife cuts for cutting vegetables. I don’t need to know kitchen terms (for example, commis is a prep cook in a professional kitchen).

However, on the other hand, as a cook, some of the terms, even the French terms, may come in handy if I happen upon a recipe that uses them.

Also, as a cook I found the opinionated essays about cooking incredibly interesting. Those essays are the reason I would recommend this book to the average cook. They make me think about cooking in a different way. I plan on rereading them regularly. Ruhlman included essays on stock, sauces, salt, the egg, heat, and tools of the kitchen.

One book he recommended reading is On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, by Harold McGee. This is a scientific explanation of food, from eggs to meat and fish to plants and on. The author has degrees in science and literature so provides scientific descriptions the layman can understand. When I read it, I’ll let you know if that is true.

Ruhlman’s last essay is about finesse. This is where I feel I’ve departed from his main point of his book: I’m not a chef and so I’m not hoping for “refinement” in my cooking. As a cook, I hope to provide fundamental home cooking for my family. However, I suspect Ruhlman is correct to some extent, even for my home kitchen: “The concept [of finesse] rest[s] on a conviction that paying attention to a few small details in any given preparation has an enormous impact on the finished dish and is the final gratification for the cook in his or her pursuit of excellence” (p. 46).

While I’m not looking for approval of my food as a restaurant chef or even as an amateur chef in any sense of the term “chef” and I’m not vainly pursuing excellence (perfectionist though I am), I think a reward to my efforts at cooking will be a gratifying and edible supper every night with my family, recognizing that there is always room for improvement.

I recommend Ruhlman’s book to the family cook only half-heartedly. The essays are excellent. The glossary of terms is a bit over-the-top. Overall, it’s great to get you thinking about food, but only with a few tablespoons of salt.

• The Making of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman
• My Spice of Life “Feast”: A Pool of Books to Chose From
• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters
• A Bite of the Spice of Life (Two Books by Julia Child and Too Many Cooks by Emily Franklin)
• The Spice of Life Challenge
• An Edge in the Kitchen by Chad Ward
• Pretend Soup by Mollie Katzen and Ann Henderson
• Masterclass in Photography by Michael and Julien Busselle
• A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg
• Book Blog Search (Beta) and Other Non-Book Review Stuff