review of cookbooks

The first book I chose to talk about is "Celebrated Chinese Dishes in Beijing". It is not hard to see that this book is for the people who are interested in Chinese culture and food, also those who are willing to go to Beijing for a visit and try some of the famous dishes in the book.

This book gives the reader a number of famous dishes served in some prominent Beijing hotels and restaurants. It also provides brief accounts of the establishments themselves, like the styles of cooking and the descriptions of some of the famous restaurants in China.

It presents a coherent theme effectively for all the pictures and the recipes in the book are well-known Chinese dishes and there are also few topics about Chinese traditional cooking and eating styles which stays close to the theme.

For the organization of the book's contents, I can say it is not very effective since there are not enough introduction about how to exactly cook the dishes introduced in the book. It would probably makes the reader more hunger for the food by the descriptions of the food under the attractive pictures but mad because they could not really make it just by reading the simple steps of how to actually cook it.

There are a lot of pictures in this book which are very well-taken and attractive to the readers, however, the texts under them are rather small and ineffective.

"Mastering The Art of French Cooking"

The second book is called "Mastering The Art of French Cooking" by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck who all had a great effect over the cooking areas. The famous writers and the impressive name of the book would probably attract a lot of readers who likes to eat and to cook French dishes. Also, in this book, they will find what they want: the exact materials for the food, the detail steps of cooking and all the techniques for those great French recipes.

This book present a coherent theme very effectively since there are just all the French recipes in the book, which all stick to the main theme.

So does the organization of the book's contents. The index clearly shows the contents of the book in order, first the techniques then recipes in sorts and some more detailed and special questions at last. Moreover, all the details of how to cook the food are all provided clearly in the book too.

There are not a lot of the pictures of the actual recipes in this book., while the texts are rather small and intensive. However, the book provides some pictures of the cooking techniques which are more necessary and useful. Overall, the visual component of the book contributes to a good sense of a coherent theme.