Announcing: The Gastronomer's Bookshelf

Hi everyone! I'm proud to announce the launch of The Gastronomer's Bookshelf, a collaborative book review site about food, wine, and food culture. It's Duncan's (of Syrup and Tang) baby, which I got on board with as soon as I heard him pitch his ideas; we've been developing it over the last month or so. I don't have a lot of money to buy books with, but each time I visit the bookstore, I can't help but marvel at the amazing variety of cookbooks out these days. I could spend hours browsing them. Reviews really help me decide what to splurge on; unfortunately there's a lot of crap reviews out there, especially on retail sites ("1 star. Teh recipes are to hard. If your a pro then you might like it") and even newspapers. Blogs are a great resource but they tend to be diffuse and unless you're subscribed to plenty of blogs that occasionally review books, you're going to have to look for them all over-- you can't "browse" the books like you'd do on the shelves, so to speak. We hope that The Gastronomer's Bookshelf helps to solve that problem by providing helpful and informative reviews from real cooks that will help us determine if any of the titles out there are inevitable classics, or surprise gems.

If you already have a book (new, old, doesn't matter) you'd like to review in mind, please don't hesitate to submit one (or ten). You could even re-post an existing review and link back to your site from The Gastronomer's Bookshelf. We already have a few up from Duncan and moi (my very first one! It was fun!) and we can't wait to fill up the "shelf" with your recommendations (or anti-recommendations). But whether you decide to submit a review or not, I hope that you enjoy the site, subscribe to its news feed, and eventually use it as a resource and a place for healthy food-related book discussion. See ya there! ;)

If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to e-mail me at the address here, or through The Gastronomer's Bookshelf website.