According to WorldCat, very few public libraries have bought Modernist Cuisine, despite the heavy media attention (the NYT, The New Yorker, NPR, Time, even Popular Science) and a starred review from Booklist.

But why would they? It retails for $625, library budgets are strained, and the book features cooking tools and techniques only available to professionals.

One library did buy it and recently explained that decision to the local press. The San Francisco Public Library ordered two copies; one for reference, one to circulate from the main library, and are considering a third for the branches. Why? Public demand, Mark Hall, the library’s cookbook buyer, tells the San Francisco Weekly. He also points out that the price tag is not for a single book, but six volumes that will be circulated individually. Does he fear theft? Not really, says Mark, “Cookbook readers seem to be a pretty responsible group.”

One benefit; the library got good press for the decision. And, at a time when people are obsessed with digital books, they are giving the public access to a physical book that shows off the ultimate in modern printing technology (Booklist says, “Stunning, dramatic color photographs transform every page into a visual banquet”). Even though some of the cooking techniques may be beyond the home cook, as Time magazine says, “no serious student of food doubts that it will stand alongside Escoffier as one of the defining cookbooks in history.”

Modernist Cuisine has sold out its initial print run and is now going back to press. Because of the the intricate printing process, it will be a while before it is back in stock at wholesalers.

Have we caught your attention with these covers?

They’re a just a few of the cookbooks you can look forward to in the coming months, from the Edelweiss list of  the cookbooks most-ordered by independent booksellers. Edelweiss produces online catalogs for publishers (a few publishers are not on the system, such as S&S, so their titles are not included). Many independent booksellers use Edelweiss for ordering.

Earlier, we posted the Edelweiss most-ordered fiction and nonfiction lists.

Full cookbook list below, after the jump.

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Librarians aren’t the only ones in the best books mashup business. The Huffington Post has put together a slide show of the Best Cookbooks for Giving. Each had to be chosen by at least two of  eight sources (four got by with just one pick — from the Huffington Post’s own Food Editors).

We’re pleased to see Brooklyn well-represented. The Frankies Spuntino’s cookbook (it’s by two Frankies and “spuntino” means “a little snack” in Italian), from EarlyWord‘s neightborhood restaurant, came in with 5 picks:

The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual Frank Falcinelli, Frank Castronovo, Peter Meehan Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Artisan – (2010-06-14) ISBN / EAN: 1579654150 / 9781579654153

And, slightly further afield, but within walking distance of EarlyWord headquarters, the bakery Baked got two picks for its innovative approach to American standards in Baked Explorations. Below, the author/owners talk about a recipe they picked up while touring for their first book:

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Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented Matt Lewis, Renato Poliafito Retail Price: $29.95 Hardcover: 208 pages Publisher: Stewart, Tabori & Chang – (2010-10-01) ISBN / EAN: 1584798505 / 9781584798507

Next week, a new window opens on the Julia Child legend, with As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto, edited by Joan Reardon, a collection of Child’s correspondence with her close friend and unofficial literary agent. The two women first encountered each other in 1952, when DeVoto responded to Child’s fan letter to her husband after reading an article he wrote about knives, and became soul mates as Childs was writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking (DeVoto is portrayed in the film Julie & Julia by Deborah Rush).

Entertainment Weekly gives it a “B”: “While their conversations can drag a bit — weather, health, and politics get too much space — the book is an absorbing portrait of an unexpected friendship.”

So far, library holds are in line with modest orders at libraries we checked – but that may change as more media arrives.

As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 432 pages Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – (2010-12-01) ISBN / EAN: 0547417713 / 9780547417714

Usual Suspects On Sale Next Week

Rescue: A Novel by Anita Shreve (Little, Brown) follows a paramedic worried that his daughter is becoming an alcoholic, like his troubled ex-wife. Library Journal says, “a solid read, though not the author’s most compelling or dazzling work. Excellent fodder for book clubs; there is plenty to discuss in the protagonists’ motivations, decisions, and characterization.”

Of Love and Evil by Anne Rice (Knopf) is the second entry in the supernatural Songs of the Seraphim series, involving a divine vigilante dispensing justice in Renaissance Italy. Kirkus says, “The plot’s intense; equally so are Rice’s meditations, while never breaking the seamlessness of the story line, on the nature of love and evil. A bullet of a book—and an absolute bull’s eye.”

Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell (Putnam) is the 18th novel with detective Kay Scarpetta.

The Sherlockian by Graham Moore (Twelve) finds a literary investigator caught up in a murder case. Library Journal says, “constant switching of narrators can be jarring, but Moore does an excellent job of making his characters and settings feel real, using his thorough knowledge of the Holmes stories to good effect.”

Clouds Without Rain by P. L. Gaus (Plume) is an Indie Next Pick for December that won bookseller praise for its slowly unravelling mystery set in Amish country, “with a good many surprises along the way. Another excellent entry in this series.”

One of EarlyWord‘s most clicked-on stories from the past year is NPR’s Best Cookbooks of 2009, so we’re happy to announce NPR’s Best Cookbooks of 2010 is here.

Even though you can Google nearly any recipe you want, T. Susan Chang tells Liane Hanson on Weekend Edition Saturday that this was an amazing year for cookbooks. In putting together this list, she stuck to the books that everyday cooks would want to use. The common thread of these books is that the “authors take the trouble to tell you everything you need to know to do the recipes. The short, cute cookbooks with almost nothing on the page, those are the ones to look out for, because they will double cross you.”

Curiously, the book that received the largest Amazon sales bump is The Food Substitutions Bible, from Canadian publisher, Robert Rose (distributed by Firefly). It rose to #53 from a lowly #18,937, proving that you can’t Google everything.

The Food Substitutions Bible: More Than 6,500 Substitutions for Ingredients, Equipment and Techniques David Joachim Retail Price: $24.95 Paperback: 696 pages Publisher: Robert Rose – (2010-09-02) ISBN / EAN: 0778802450 / 9780778802457

Legendary Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards is setting the tabloid press abuzz over excerpts from his new memoir, Life, in the Times of London, where (big surprise) he says that Mick Jagger has been ”unbearable” since the 1980s.

In the New York Times, Janet Maslin calls Richards’ memoir ”a big, fierce, game-changing account of the Stones’ nearly half-century-long adventure. . . . some of its most surprisingly revelatory material appears in what Mr. Richards jokingly calls ‘Keef’s Guitar Workshop.’ Here are the secrets of some of the world’s most famous rock riffs and the almost toy-level equipment on which they were recorded.”

Life Keith Richards Retail Price: $29.99 Hardcover: 576 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-10-26) ISBN / EAN: 031603438X / 9780316034388

• CD: Hachette Audio; $34.98; ISBN 9781600242403
• Large Print: Little Brown and Co., $31.99; ISBN 9780316120364

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks (Knopf) explores how people with impaired senses handle, and even excel at, everyday life, drawing on six case studies including his own loss of depth perception due to a tumor.

Broke: The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth and Treasure by Glenn Beck and Kevin Balfe (Threshold) outlines the economic ideas of the Fox News pundit.

Memoirs and Biographies

Cleopatra by Stacy Shiff (Little, Brown). Sure, it’s a bio of a fascinating historical figure by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, but the buzz around this book has focused on its adaptation as a movie, with Scott Rudin producing, James Cameron in talks to direct (in 3-D!), and Angelina Jolie possibly starring.

The Elephant to Hollywood by Michael Caine (Holt) “revisits familiar territory” from his first memoir, according to Kirkus, “including childhood poverty, the deprivations of World War II, faltering first steps in show business before signature roles in The Ipcress File (1965) and Alfie (1966) made him an international film star—but his warm, wry delivery keeps the material interesting, even though many of the anecdotes have a distinctly practiced feel.”

You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness by Julie Klam (Riverhead) is about a “slightly wacky person who, instead of looking inward for answers [to how to be happy], decided to help others — specifically, Boston terriers,” according to the 11/1 issue of People, where the book is a People Pick and garnered 3.5 of 4 stars.

My Nest Isn’t Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space: Adventures of an Ordinary Woman by Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Scottolini Serritella (St. Martin’s Press) is a collection of true life stories originally written for the Philadelphia Inquirer by the popular suspense writer and her daughter.

Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage by Hazel Rowley (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) examines the relationship between FDR and his wife.  PW says “Despite Rowley’s cheerleading that the cousins’ conflicts brought out their courage and radicalism, and that they loved with a generosity of spirit that withstood betrayal, FDR emerges as a narcissist while Eleanor carved a spectacular life.”

First Family: Abigail and John Adams by Joseph J. Ellis (Knopf) gets praise from PW: “Ellis’s supple prose and keen psychological insight give a vivid sense of the human drama behind history’s upheavals.”

Cookbook Season
The major gift-giving season will soon be upon us, bringing a raft of new cookbooks.

Barefoot Contessa How Easy Is That?: Fabulous Recipes & Easy Tips by Ina Garten (Clarkson Potter) focuses on simplifying meals without sacrificing quality. The Food Network guru will appear on the Today Show October 26  and 27.

The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century, Amanda Hesser (W.W. Norton) ; long before the Contessa became barefoot, the NYT was publishing recipes. In what is sure to be THE gift cookbook of the year, Amanda Hesser examined the NYT recipes since the newspaper began running them in the 1850′s, chronicling the effort in the NYT Magazine series Recipe Redux (the latest is about readers’ “most stained” recipes).

Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes, Harold McGee (Penguin Press) was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air last night, shooting the book to #15 on Amazon sales rankings.

The NYT Dining & Wine section takes a look at Sunset magazine’s role in promoting the California life style. The article says that Sunset can be thought of as “the Betty White of food magazines,” getting a new life after being eclipsed by celebrity chefs and flashy cooking shows because of

… its extreme dedication to regional food, its reputation among readers for reliable recipes honed in a skilled test kitchen and its forays into the D.I.Y. ethos of backyard beekeeping and home vinegar making has helped with a rehabilitation.

A new collection of recipes from the magazine came out this week. It was not reviewed prepub and is not owned by most libraries we checked.

The Sunset Cookbook: Over 1,000 Fresh, Flavorful Recipes for the Way You Cook Today Sunset Books, Margo True Retail Price: $34.95 Hardcover: 816 pages Publisher: Oxmoor House – (2010-10-19) ISBN / EAN: 0376027940 / 9780376027948

We love that O’Reilly Media, known for it’s geeky-but-in-a-cool-way tech books and conferences, has published a cookbook, aptly titled Cooking for Geeks, by Jeff Potter. The current issue of USA Today says, ”it’s interesting enough for the experienced sous-chef but covers the basics (scrambled eggs = a surprising foray into protein entanglement) for the truly cooking-impaired” and details Potter’s rather frightening efforts to hack his oven so it would be hot enough to produce a great thin crust pizza.

Cooking for Geeks is also on O’Reilly’s on-demand digital library, Safari Books Online.

Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food Jeff Potter Retail Price: $34.99 Paperback: 432 pages Publisher: O’Reilly Media – (2010-08-02) ISBN / EAN: 0596805888 / 9780596805883

Diana Kennedy, who at 87 is still “on the hunt for the perfect tamale,” has done for Mexican cooking what Julia Child did for French cuisine; celebrated it and made it accessible to home cooks.

She is interviewed on NPR’s Morning Edition about her new book which focuses on Oaxaca, “the culinary hot spot of Mexico.”

Oaxaca al Gusto: An Infinite Gastronomy (William and Bettye Nowlin Series in Art, History, and Culture of the Western Hemisphere) Diana Kennedy Retail Price: $50.00 Hardcover: 459 pages Publisher: University of Texas Press – (2010-09-15) ISBN / EAN: 0292722664 / 9780292722668

Those wonderful folks who invented the classic/vampire/zombie mashups have turned their attention to pasta. The result, The Geometry of Pasta was featured on NPR‘s All Things Considered last night and rose to #106 on Amazon’s sales rankings (from a lowly #8,529 yesterday).

One of my favorite travel memories is wandering the aisles of a grocery store in Florence with an Italian speaker who translated the evocative names for me (‘priest strangler,” “bridegrooms, “larks tongues”). Turns out they are not just quixotic; there’s a reason for those shapes.

And, of course, there is an addictive book trailer.

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The Geometry of Pasta Caz Hildebrand, Jacob Kenedy Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Quirk Books – (2010-08-17) ISBN / EAN: 1594744955 / 9781594744952

We’re always happy to see a neighborhood joint do well, especially since our neighborhood is in Brooklyn, a borough sometimes overshadowed by that other one across the river.

So, imagine our delight when we heard Frankies Sputino, a restaurant a mere ten blocks from EarlyWord HQ, featured on NPR’s All Things Considered ? Like many of you, we first learned about the eatery from that font of all things worth knowing, Michael Rockliff, Workman’s head of library marketing (get a sample of his newsletter here).

As a result of the feature, the restaurant’s cookbook rose to #82 on Amazon sales rankings (from #2,453 yesterday).

The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual Frank Falcinelli, Frank Castronovo, Peter Meehan Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Artisan – (2010-06-14) ISBN / EAN: 1579654150 / 9781579654153

Weeks ahead of its release next Tuesday, The Facebook Effect by Fortune magazine’s David Kirkpatrick has received hundreds of mentions across the web in virtually every news article about Facebook’s latest adjustments to its privacy policy as it nears the milestone of 500 million worldwide members. The book is already at #409 on Amazon, and libraries are showing growing holds on light orders.

This is the Facebook that Facebook wants you to see — both the glamorous and the ugly sides of one of the most successful, fastest-growing companies in recent memory… It’s fascinating. It’s well-written and masterfully reported. Still, one is left wondering if anything more sordid was missed.

The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World David Kirkpatrick Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2010-06-08) ISBN / EAN: 1439102112 / 9781439102114

Other Major Nonfiction Titles on Sale Next Week

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook by Anthony Bourdain (Ecco) offers an unvarnished look at young superstar chef David Chang, the revered Alice Waters,  “Top Chef” winners and losers, and more.

The Only Game in Town: Sportswriting from the New Yorker edited by David Remnick (Random House) collects pieces from Roger Angell, A.J. Liebling, John Updike, Don Delillo and others.

The Country Cooking of Ireland by Colman Andrews was named the Cookbook of the Year at the James Beard Foundation ceremony on Sunday night. Celebrity chef and restauranteur, Thomas Keller, won for General Cooking with Ad Hoc at Home (Artisan), which also won an IACP Award last week. The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts (Abrams), also won awards from both groups.

The Country Cooking of Ireland Colman Andrews Retail Price: $50.00 Hardcover: 392 pages Publisher: Chronicle Books – (2009-11-11) ISBN / EAN: 081186670X / 9780811866705

This book had us at the cover, but clearly it’s got even more going for it; the International Assoc. of Culinary Professionals named Rose’s Heavenly Cakes the Cookbook of the Year.

Rose’s Heavenly Cakes Rose Levy Beranbaum Retail Price: $39.95 Hardcover: 512 pages Publisher: Wiley – (2009-09-22) ISBN / EAN: 0471781738 / 9780471781738

Perhaps the judges feel the need for more sweetness in life; baking books won in two other categories (view the full list here):

Professional Kitchens

Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft The Culinary Institute of America Retail Price: $70.00 Hardcover: 944 pages Publisher: Wiley – (2009-05-04) ISBN / EAN: 047005591X / 9780470055915

Food and Beverage Reference/Technical

The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts International Culinary Center, Judith Choate Retail Price: $75.00 Hardcover: 512 pages Publisher: Stewart, Tabori & Chang – (2009-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 1584798033 / 9781584798033

In this Sunday’s NYT Magazine Frank Bruni profiles Katie Lee, aspiring food celebrity.

She appears regularly on The Early Show. Her cooking column, Eat This Up, appears monthly in Cosmopolitan. She’s published books; a requirement for any food celebrity. The first book even landed her a spot on Oprah (perhaps largely because her husband at the time, Billy Joel, appeared with her).

Sales of Lee’s second book, minus the Oprah effect, have been modest. Lee observes to Bruni that the cookbooks that sell the best are by people who have their own show. Having failed to sell an earlier pilot, she is now working on another one. She also has a contract with S&S for a novel, loosely based on her life with Billy Joel.

Trying to become famous must be exhausting.

The Comfort Table: Recipes for Everyday Occasions Katie Lee Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment – (2009-10-20) ISBN / EAN: 1439126747 / 9781439126745

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The Comfort Table Katie Lee Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment – (2008-04-01) ISBN / EAN: 141694835X / 9781416948353