Do you prefer your cookbooks as hardbacks or paperbacks?

[Blueridge]

I'm curious if you spend the extra cash to get hardback cookbooks, since they receive so much wear and tear, or do you enjoy the bends and rumples of paperbacks to remind you of all the attention they have gotten? :)

[JFSinIL]

I barely open mine anymore - if I need a new recipe I find one on-line and print it out. Every good recipe finds its way into my recipe binder.

[Rhonda in TX]

I have to vote "neither". I prefer coil or spiral binding. I like the cookbook to be able to lay flat on the counter.

 

The majority of the damage to my favorite cookbooks is through stains, and that doesn't depend on the binding. :001_smile:

[mysticamethyst]

I don't have a preference to either hard or soft cover, I collect cook books so I have all kinds. What I like to do is print them out and use a piece of paper. I am a horribly messy cook and so many of my books are ruined because of sticky pages. :001_smile:

[TheCoffeeChick]

I barely open mine anymore - if I need a new recipe I find one on-line and print it out. Every good recipe finds its way into my recipe binder.

 

:iagree: This is me too! I only have 1 actual cookbook, but I never open it.

[Orthodox6]

I have an extensive library of cookbooks. Studying and using them is what has trained me to develop my own recipes. When I can afford a hardback edition of a book which I can tell will be used often, I buy hb. I never would turn down a paperback of a good book, though !

 

The disaster occurred a few years ago when we took in a waif, 8-week-old puppy that chewed off the spines of a dozen of my best cookbooks. (Mine are on bookshelves in the kitchen.)

[Perry]

I barely open mine anymore - if I need a new recipe I find one on-line and print it out. Every good recipe finds its way into my recipe binder.

 

Me too. I am slowly getting rid of my cookbook collection. I occasionally use "Joy of Cooking" but haven't opened any other cookbook in years. My Allrecipes binder is growing and growing though.

[sparrow]

I have to vote "neither". I prefer coil or spiral binding. I like the cookbook to be able to lay flat on the counter.

 

The majority of the damage to my favorite cookbooks is through stains, and that doesn't depend on the binding. :001_smile:

 

:iagree: Spiral bound!

[Blueridge]

Interesting preferences! I guess I am a cookbook *collector*. :001_tt1: Sometimes I get a cookbook because it has ONE amazing recipe...it's an obsession, similar to the one I have about curriculum and wonderful books in general. ;) I recently bought Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It was in a larger order so I was trying to economize when I could. But getting it...all 700 pages of it...and now I am regretting not getting it in hardback. I was also concerned that it would weigh 50 lbs. ! So, maybe I should cover it with clear contact paper and stop worrying.

[Moira in MA]

I go with whatever is available but usually only buy after trying the library's copy first.

 

Hb is not always better than paperback -- I got a 2nd, hb, copy of the New Basics after my first, pb, copy failed. Well, the hb failed in just the same way -- yes it had hard covers but it was still a glued binding and....

 

~Moira

[KatieJ]

I prefer Hardback, but really only have a couple of Softcover. My Joy of Cooking is decades old and falling apart. I have considered taking it to Staples or Office Depot and seeing if they can put a spiral binding in it...otherwise I may have to find a hardcover one.

[Shelly in the Country]

I've never paid attention to the binding of cookbooks. I guess I have a mix. I've always just bought whatever binding was available. I have an extensive cookbook collection. I'm in the process of adding my most used recipes into my Cook'n software so they are easier to find.

 

I don't think the hardcovers are necessarily any better than paperbacks. I have more hardcover cookbooks that are falling apart at the binding than I do paperbacks that are falling apart. My paperback cookbooks look pretty beat up, but at least all their bindings are intact. My hardcover Joy of Cooking is held together with packing tape and my hardcover Blue Ribbon Country Cookbook had to be glued back together with Elmer's.

Edited April 29, 2010 by Shelly in the Country

[elise1mds]

Hardbound with spiral inside! Dislike binder rings like my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook has because the pages tend to tear easily. Don't really like paperbacks because it's a pain in the rear to get them to stay open if they are of any thickness at all... at least until I've made the recipe enough to have it memorized, anyway!