Books.

There has been a lot of talk about books around the web at the moment. About old favourites, new favourites, and of course everyone's favourite, the public library.

So I thought for a bit of fun I would share with you just how out of hand my little cook book library is getting. We live in a small flat, and are both book obsessives, and so books are on shelves, on floors, on books, in cupboards, and always, always in hands. We have many genres, and are not snobs, "bath books" (those deemed comfort reads that do not suffer from damp fingers, rather revel in them) are tucked alongside classics, both new and old. My PhD related books take up almost the entire spare room (which is mostly to do with having to have at least three copies of all works by the author I was writing about, one for reading, one for annotating, and one first edition - oh and sometimes ones in languages I can't read, but simply wanted for the novelty!)

But it is the cookbooks that pose the most problems. They are of unusual and uneven sizes, and so do not uniformly suit one shelf. Nor is there space enough for all of them in the kitchen, so they are spread out all over the place like a grazing flock. And they move around. They go from being presents on show (in the living room), to bedside reading, to much splattered and in use, to pausing on the kitchen table before they make the rounds again. They are often found in cahoots with the craft books, conversing with the gardening section, or hanging out with the fantasy literature.

I dream of a house where I can have them all in one place, and yet I know it's much more fun this way.

Where do your cookbooks hang out?