Forum

I'd be curious to know the top 5 members with the biggest collections, their shelf count. Not that I consider quantity to be over quality, just want to see how crazy my own collecting has become. Thanks.

Crikey, I thought I had enough to be going on with but I feel like an amateur compared to you! How do you store them all?!

Who is Crikey? hoping a moderator will jump in and tell who is the most shelf heavy. 

We can give you the figures, but it's also fun for everyone to chime in with their own counts. You can also click on the Bookshelves people icon for the most popular books and you can immediately see who the serious collectors are.

Among the heaviest Bookshelves are the libraries - Johnson & Wales with 7,181 books, America's Test Kitchen with 4,122, French Culinary Institute with 4,475, Food Network with 3,476, and Oxford Brookes University with 3,232.

But there are lots of regular EYB members who have huge collections, that make my own 1,619 books seem reasonable.  AgusiaH with 4,439, tasteslike with 3,221, manycookbooks with 3,202, AW with 3,015 - click any Bookshelves icon to see who else owns your own favorite books, then click their name to see what books you both own.

Originally Posted by: ericg

Who is Crikey? hoping a moderator will jump in and tell who is the most shelf heavy. 

Crikey is a standard Australian exclamation, indicating that I am impressed by your collection.

Never heard that term, yes I have quite a few. I got really into French for a while, then Southern USA, and I started by getting all of the most highly reccomended skill and technique books. I have a room with several book cases, they must be at least 16 inches deep for a double row of books. Always keep the heavy text books on the bottom shelf. I think I'm basically done buying books except for the few "must haves" that will release every year. 

EYB: Interesting, those educational institutes even have accounts here? Thank You. 

I can't speak for others, but many of the 500+ on my shelf actually belong to the library; I can check them out if I see a recipe that interests me so its very helpful to add them to my bookshelf here even though I don'actually own them.  

Originally Posted by: ericg

Who is Crikey? hoping a moderator will jump in and tell who is the most shelf heavy. 

Crikey is also used in New Zealand :-) 

I'm kind of like Bching, in that not all of the books on my shelf are mine. Some of them are my MIL's and I just borrow them when come across something I'm interested in. Although most of them are mine.

I have a lot more books than what's shown since I have many books without the isbn (pre 70's I think).  I wish I can somehow add these since few are my favorites such as The Uncommon Cook Book by Ruth Mellinkoff and Best Recipes from the Cook Book Guild.  But, certainly not over 1500 books (I think......)

My listed book shelf is also inflated by library books.  I consider the library my "other bookshelf" when it comes to cookbooks.  I like that they keep them much better organized that I do with my own collection (~100).

Rinshin - can't you just search title rather than ISBN to locate and list those favorite books?

It's not about quantity, it's about quality. You could replace 100 cookbooks by the likes of Bobby Flay or Martha Stewart with one by Patience Gray or Thomas Keller and still come out ahead.

All the books in my library are physically in my house and belong to me. I have more than that figure though since I have vintage cookbooks and other books that don't exist on EYB.

Just over a quarter of the books on my EYB Bookshelf are here in the house; another 15% or so are available at the library or from friends.  Well over half are virtual: They're wishlists / books of interest -- ones I hope to borrow from a friend's house, find at the library, or run across at a used book sale/bookstore.  Bookmarks have helped immensely to organize the  wishlists and figure out which ones I really want enough to buy them.

Despite nominal similarity in Bookshelf size, my real shelves and JuneHawk's are very different: we have only eight books in common!

When I first joined EYB, there were quite a few pre-ISBN books on my shelves not in the Library, but steady EYB expansion and some culling have reduced that number to two or three.

I have been following this forum with interest and thinking about my various cookbooks in light of some of the comments.  All of the cookbooks on my EYB bookshelf also reside on a bookshelf at home.  Many are like old friends, we know each others limitations, have lots of great memories and even though we are both getting older I can't even think about not having them in my life.  Others are newer and we are still getting to know each other.  How reliable are these new friends?  Can I trust everything they say?  No matter, they are interesting and I will learn something from them no matter what.  Just like friends, some cookbooks are always reliable and others are a bit flaky but really fun.  In the past I have gotten rid of cookbooks that I realize are just taking up space and don't even have one recipe that I cannot do without.  I must say that without EYB I would never have dreamed of allowing my cookbook collection get this size.  I do check the EYB library before adding a book.  If it is indexed, there is no reason not to pick it up at the used bookstore.

My total as listed on EYB is only 686, but like others who posted many of my books are not on EYB for whatever reason.  My actual total is just shy of 1,000 - 982.  I've been collecting cookbooks for a long time, and while some of my books are antiques dating back to early 1800's, most pf the ones that aren't listed on EYB date from the early 60's .  My buying patterns have changed radically since I first started collecting.  At first, during the 60's as a newlywed without a lot of money to spend on books, I bought fund-raising books published by local charities, churches, and women's clubs.  A lot of my family's  favorites came straight out of those books.  In th eearly 70's a gift of the Time Life series Foods of the World got me interested in foreign cuisines and for years most of the books I bought were while on vacation, whenever I could find an English version of a coookbook dealing with the local cuisine.  Starting in the 80's I found myself buying cookbooks from restaurants we had the good fortune to dine  at, whether near home or while traveling, a habit I cling to even today.   I'm not too big on buying books by celebrity chefs as I find most of the celebrity chefs more flash and Food Network TV hype than talent.  But I have to admit I was a sucker for Jamie Oliver's books and still am.  His down to earth dishes just appeal to me.  Since the internet I've cut down on buying cookbooks, there's so many blogs and cooking websites to tap.  If I find myself "running into" a particular book whether online or in the papers and magazines and if I find myself liking the recipes, I will end up buying the book.  Which is how the Ottolenghi books entered my collection.  I often hear people say if they get three or four recipes from a book it was worth the price.  I would be very disappointed in any book that only gave me that number of decent recipes.   I own every cookbook authored or edited by James Beard and by Jacques Pepin.  I have cooked endlessly from their books and to date have never found a recipe that didn't come out as promised. 

I too can claim that some of the books on "my" shelf are really located at the library!

Oaktoncook - you seem to have set up two different EYB memberships using different email addresses and usernames.  One is Free, which is the one you signed into as Oaktoncook, and the other is a Premium membership which is where your Bookshelf is located.  I have emailed you to explain what you have done.