Two Classic Culinary Volumes

Yesterday at the library I saw a sign that I could not ignore:

Cookbooks 50¢

These were no paperbacks. These were large, heavy hardcover first editions.

The two volumes pictured above, Marcella Hazan's Marcella's Italian Kitchen (1986) and Coleman Andrews's Flavors of the Riviera (1996), contain so many impeccably written and ceaselessly interesting pages of text — in addition to the hundreds of recipes — that each volume qualifies as a piece of literature. Even if you ignored all of the recipes, you could still feel utterly enriched by the reading. This must certainly be the best dollar I have ever spent on books!