What does a food writer with hundreds of cookbooks do at a books sale?
Buy more cookbooks, of course. Which I did even before the Friends of the Library book sale opened Friday night at the Friends of the Library booksale at McKinley High School (I’m on the board so got a sneak preview).
This time, I kept my purchases modest — a few for friends I knew envied my copies of some old local classics, a few baking books as I’m readying to write a book on baking, a couple of oddball things.
The cookbook section is pretty well stocked. Two treasures I found were multiple copies of Japanese Cooking, the classic cookbook by a Japanese women’s club associated with the Y and long out of print. Also, lots of copies of Mary Sia’s respected Chinese cookbook. I found an old Titus Chan that I didn’t have. Most of the community cookbooks were ones I had or had already picked over.
If you like to read about food, the essays box is well stocked and very reasonably priced because these books don’t sell all that well, but they make great “food porn” for intellectual types who like to think beyond the recipe.
They will be restocking the book sale throughout the week as they have thousands and thousands of boxes of books, so it’s worth more than one visit. The sale is open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday. All books are 50 percent off Saturday and all books are 50 cents Sunday. Go to Friendsofthelibraryofhawaii.org for info.
I’m cooking lunch for volunteers next week so have to get my cooking and shopping hat on!