“But a Nook can’t read, so a Nook can’t cook. So…what good to a Nook is a hook cook book?”
–One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Dr. Seuss

I’m sure that’s not what Barnes & Noble had in mind when they named their e-reader.

A recent article in the New York Times asks if cookbooks are obsolete (leading question much?). It describes how a number of wonderful apps are sweeping traditional cookbooks and recipe cards off the kitchen counter and back onto their shelves to gather dust.

As usual, there is plenty of room for both sides. Certainly, some people will gravitate toward these apps and e-versions of cookbooks on tablets or e-reader devices, either replacing or enhancing their print cookbooks; others will ignore the new toys (audio, video, flowcharts, built-in timers and glossaries) and continue using their print books.

There’s also a middle ground: Eat Your Books offers a way to search through all the indexes of all your cookbooks for a particular recipe. The recipes themselves can’t be accessed through the site unless they are free online, but by searching the indexes of all the books you already own, you can find what you’re looking for much more easily; it’s a way of semi-digitizing your cookbooks. You can also add blogs such as Chocolate & Zucchini and Smitten Kitchen to your “shelves” and search those too.

Incidentally, the NYT article neglects to mention what would happen if one were to spill soup onto one’s iPad.