Cookbooks

Thought I should do something different, you know, instead of writing just reviews. Its just a random thought that came to my head.

I love to cook and I enjoy looking for new recipes and trying them out on my partner, friends and family. The thing is, you start to run out of ideas fairly quickly with one cookbook, so you buy another and another and another, until you run out of shelf space. Or what people do, which I erge more people to do is, getting them online, eg GoodFood, or Channel 4 Food. Most of the time you end up with something as good as out of a cookbook.

But anyway back to what I was saying. The thought of getting a cookbook from a library has never occurred to me until yesterday when I was retuning The Shack to my local library. They had a fair number of these books which were varied, eg for diabetes, low fat, low carb, Indian, Thai, Italian etc.I got a couple of  them (Just Five ingredients by Ainsley Harriot & 5 nights a week by Valli Little) and I  must say it works out a lot cheaper than buying them from Waterstones or any bookshop. And the majority of the time, in these cookbooks, you only want to do about a 1/2 of the recipes, so why pay the extra for only 1/2 a book.

So it would be cheaper to either get a cook book from the library, copy a couple of the recipes for yourself or get them online. One final thought before I go and cook my tea, Why are there less cookbooks with pictures? Wouldn't we like to see what the end product will be? I personally cook better if I know what it will eventually look like. It seems like someone giving you some lego, the instruction book but without the pictures of what  it will look like at the end, you want to know if the effort will be worth it in the end.

Happy Cooking and Happy Reading Everyone!!!

Reading: The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld

So onwards and upwards for this next book. I have had this on my 'To Read List' for quite a while and thought I start it now, before I put it off anymore. Since I am a psychology student I have been interested in Sigmund Frued for a while and even visited his house in London. But this book takes place in New York.

Blurb: On the morning after Sigmund Freud arrives in New York on his first visit to the US a woman is strangled in her penthouse apartment. Then the next night, an heiress, Nora Acton is wounded and tied to the chandelier and is unable to speak or recall the event. Freud and his American disciple Stratham Younger are asked to help her recover her memory and identify the killer.

I have started reading the book since I couldn't continue with the previous book. If you  have any thoughts about this book, psychology or the works of Freud please comment below. Happy  Reading Everyone!

Review The Shack by Wm Paul Young

First things first, I didnt finish the book in a week (as you can tell). During the time between the last post and this one I have been trying to sit down and read this book but it took me this long just to get through the first half of the book since I found it so monotonous and slow. I did give up on the book so I am sorry about that but I do read for pleasure. But I can review what I have read so far and what I have quickly browsed of the following pages.

The Story: This books starts off with Mackenzie who is in his house talking about 'The Great Sadness', which in this case is when his daughter is murdered by a serial killer. He gets a letter from 'Papa' (this is the name that  his wife gives God), which explains that he will meet him at the shack where his daughter was murdered. So he goes to the shack and meets God, talks to him and asks questions about life, why he would let his daughter  be murdered and lifes big questions.

I do enjoy a philisophical debate, such as does God exist, whats in the afterlife, Is there an afterlife etc. I did think this was going to be philisophical but it ended up being a religious studies lesson and the topic for the lesson was christianity. Fair enough I am bias and not belive in Christianity but it felt like this book was trying to convert me.

I can sum up the plot in one word, SLOW. You need patients for this book and if you don't have it then do yourself a favour and don't buy the book. I always think a good book has to have a gripping beginning otherwise the reader loses interest and reads something different. The book was good at the beginning as it set up what I believed an interesting plot. You wonder what the 'Great Sadness' was and you feel for the character as he tries to find his daughter. Then when he  reaches the Shack to find nothing then it  changes into a refurbished cabin. And are introduced to the 'Holy Trinity'. After that, it goes down hill and its more of a conversation between them. This is the point of the book but personally I found it boring.

I  cant really write much more about it since I only read half the book (and its fairly short book) and I didn't get that far into the different conversations Mackenzie had. If I knew what I was getting myself in for, I would have chosen something else to read. But if you enjoy Christian books, then give this a go. However if your looking for something more fast paced and gripping, try a thriller or crime book. 5/10