Upon entering the cookbook section of Barnes and Noble, the first cookbook that I noticed was the Silver Spoon. I immediately noticed its simplicity in its presentation. With over 2,000 recipes, it was quite a heavy cookbook. In the beginning, it included a collection of cooking terms and their definitions which I thought was neat. In addition, immediately following the glossary of cooking terms was an informative section of all of the cookware one might use. The cookbook was organized by type of food from meats to vegetables to desserts. There were handy ribbon bookmarks attached to the spine of the book for the user's convenience as well. With simple recipes I believe this cookbook was put together for those that are more amateur in their experience with cooking.

Several cookbooks later, I came across izakaya, a japanese cookbook. "Izakaya", meaning japanese pub, was a fitting title for this interesting little cookbook that successfully presented recipes as well as to introduce the izakaya history and food culture. This was accomplished through candid photos of pubs and old black and white photos that showed the atmosphere that these kinds of recipes would be prepared and served in. There were 60 recipes collected for an audience from the home chef to the professional cook. In addition, there were suggestions of sake, cocktails, and other alcoholic drinks to go along with every recipe. Though the book was much more cluttered in its layout and slightly more informal than others, I thought it was fitting for the type of cookbook it intended to be.